Purgatorio (101 page)

133.
   The voices overhead that greeted the travelers as they entered this terrace (
Purg
. XIII.25–27) return, again moving against the direction of their movement, but now presenting negative exemplars. Cain’s words are translated from the Vulgate (Genesis 4:14): “Everyone who finds me shall slay me,” spoken before God marked his forehead after the murder of his brother, Abel, so that he would not, indeed, be slain. For Cain’s association with Envy, according to some fathers of the Church, see Cassell (Cass.1984.2), p. 17.
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139.
   See Ovid,
Metamorphoses
II.797–819, where Mercury turns Aglauros to stone because she wants him for herself and stations herself outside her sister Herse’s door in order to prevent his entry to Herse’s bedchamber. Mercury then opens the door with a touch of his caduceus. That scene has already been (tacitly) present in
Inferno
IX.89–90, where the Mercury-like angel opens the gates of Dis to Virgil and Dante. See the note to that passage.

Cain and Aglauros share the condition of envy of a sibling, Cain of Abel, Aglauros of Herse. The second exemplar of Charity, Pylades, was in a brotherly relationship with Orestes, even though they were not related by blood (
Purg
. XIII.32).
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140–141.
   It is noteworthy that the voices presenting the exemplars of Charity are courteous and inviting (
Purg
. XIII.25–27), while these, presenting exemplars of Envy, are like lightning and thunder and cause the protagonist to be fearful.
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143–146.
   Virgil’s language in this passage is biblical: Psalm 31:9 (32:9): “Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit [Vulgate:
camo
] and bridle [Vulgate:
freno
]….” (a passage also cited by Dante in
Monarchia
III.xv.9, as was first noted by Tommaseo [1837]); Ecclesiastes 9:12: “as the fishes that are taken in an evil net [Vulgate:
hamo
(hook)], and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of man snared.…” See
Purgatorio
XIII.40 for Dante’s first use of
freno
on the terraces and see the note to XIII.37–42. The devil sets his snares or hooks to trap humankind. The next passage presents God’s way of hunting us.
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147–151.
   God’s “lure”
(richiamo)
, a technical term from falconry, is part of this magnificent final image, which turns our human expectations upside down. God is seen as a falconer in the Empyrean spinning his lures, the stars that end each
cantica
, over his head, as it were, while we are falcons that are not drawn to this amazing bait, but look down to the earth for our temptations. Compare that other disobedient falcon, the monster Geryon, at
Inferno
XVII.127–132. The language of this passage is Boethian. See
De consolatione philosophiae
III.m8: “[Humans] dig the earth in search of the good, which soars above the star-filled heavens” (trans. R. Green).
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1–6.
   This belabored opening has bothered any number of readers. Benvenuto, commenting on its six verses, remarks that all Dante means to say is that it is the hour of Vespers, and that he does so by means of circumlocution (“per unam circuitionem verborum”). However, Arnaldo Bonaventura (Bona.1902.1), pp. 9–10, chides Venturi (1732) for labeling the construction a “miserabile similitudine” (perfectly dreadful simile) and remarks that such lighthearted moments are also to be found in the Psalms of David and in the epics of Homer and of Virgil. Cachey (Cach.1993.1), pp. 212–14, following, as he says, Longfellow, and who speaks of Dante’s poetry as being playful, has learned to enjoy the poetic playfulness of vv. 1–40, so long softly ridiculed and even characterized as a result of the poet’s letting us see his worst (pedantic) side. Longfellow, bringing a fellow poet’s perspective to the passage, had realized that Dante is not a stuffed owl and perceived that his fellow poet is having a little fun with himself and with us: “Dante states this simple fact with curious circumlocution, as if he would imitate the celestial sphere in this
scherzoso
movement. The beginning of the day is sunrise; consequently the end of the third hour, three hours after sunrise, is represented by an arc of the celestial sphere measuring forty-five degrees. The sun had still an equal space to pass over before his setting. This would make it afternoon in Purgatory, and midnight in Tuscany, where Dante was writing the poem.” For a similar time-telling passage see
Purgatorio
III.25–26 and note. Here, however, Dante underlines his ludic propensity in his first rhyme:
terza-scherza
, as though to imply that this very
tercet
is itself
playful
.

It is to Cachey’s credit that he builds his treatment of the entire canto on his sense of this initial burst of “childish” enthusiasm. Exuberance is the strand that ties together many elements of the canto, from its beginning to its end, juxtaposing youthful, innocent play against older “high seriousness.” The morning sun is not currently shining on the mount of purgatory but is summoned in order to begin the canto, and is then followed by a series of benign presences: Dante (both as poet and as protagonist); the Angel of Mercy; Virgil’s representation of the loving souls in paradise, including Beatrice; the twelve-year-old Jesus and his mildly chastising mother; the youth who kissed the daughter of Pisistratus and this nonjudgmental father; the youthful martyr Stephen; the “drunken” protagonist. The exuberant love of God and ecstatic awareness of His presence eventually fills the canto.
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7–12.
   The travelers, proceeding to their right as they climbed the mountain, have now moved some 90 degrees along the circle of which it is the center. The sun, at 3
PM
, is thus to the northwest as it heads west ahead of them. Where it was behind them before (
Purg
. III.16–18), it now stands directly before them, brighter than it has been, to Dante’s sight, at any point yet in the poem. This excess of light will carry forward into the brightness of the ecstatic light that is soon to flood the inner eye of the protagonist.
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13–15.
   Poletto (1894) calls attention to the passage in
Convivio
(III.ix.10) in which Dante says that Aristotle had confuted Plato’s notion that our eyesight went out from us to take cognizance of external things, arguing (correctly, adds Dante) that things that we perceive through the eyes (
lo visibile
—the noun that Dante uses here) strike upon our senses, not the senses on them. See
Inferno
X.69.
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16–24.
   This simile introduces a “second sun” to Dante’s dazzled glance, now the reflected radiance of the angel, as seems clear from the context and despite some early commentators who believe this is the direct beam of the light of God or of the sun itself. It seems to be neither, nor indeed the direct beam of brightness from the angel of this second terrace. As the elaborate simile and the sequential description of the light make plain enough, the light bounces down, and then up, under Dante’s protective hand, so that the angle of incidence is the same as the angle of reflection (\|/), notions established, for Dante, by such authorities as Euclid and Albertus Magnus. For Dante’s knowledge of the phenomenon see
Convivio
II.iii.vi (where he refers to the science of perspective, or optics) and
Paradiso
I.49–50.
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28–33.
   Virgil’s promise that eventually Dante’s eyes, as his soul becomes more fit for the task, will be able to look upon angelic radiance without turning away is fulfilled at least in
Purgatorio
XXX.10 and XXX.18, where this word for “angel,”
messo
(or
messaggiero
)—“messenger,” is next (and for the last time) employed (it was introduced to the poem in
Inf.
IX.85).
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36.
   The “stairway” to the third terrace will be less steep than those to Pride and Envy. The slowly disappearing P’s on Dante’s brow, the increasing lightness of his being, the increasing ease of the ascent, all these elements underline the general improvement of the penitent’s moral condition, comparable to that of a patient who has survived a crisis and now grows rapidly stronger.
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38–39.
   A portion of the fifth Beatitude in Matthew (5:7), “Blessèd are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,” is here accompanied by an Italian phrase. In one later moment (on the terrace of Gluttony,
Purg
. XXIV.151–154) Dante will set the angel’s recasting of one of the Beatitudes in Italian. Here he offers biblical Latin conjoined with a subsequent Italian expression. Various issues have puzzled various commentators of this somewhat surprising conjunction. (1) What biblical text do these words paraphrase? (2) Who speaks, the angel or the penitents that Dante leaves behind? (3) Are the words directed to Dante or are they some sort of general expression? (4) Why does the speaker (whoever it is who speaks) resort to Italian?

(1) Most commentators after Daniello (1568) are drawn to the subsequent text in this chapter in Matthew’s gospel (5:12), Jesus’s conclusion of his sermon, in which he tells those who are true to Him to “
rejoice
(
gaudete
) and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.”

In order to answer the last three questions, it is probably necessary to consider the entire program of the angelic utterances to Dante during his penitential ascent of the mountain. These moments occur as follows:
Purgatorio
XII.110–111; XV.38–39; XVII.68–69; XIX.49–50; XXII.5–6; XXIV.151–154; XXVII.8–9. In all the last five of these the text clearly and specifically attributes the words to the angel. Only the first and second are, when we first read them, opaque. Nonetheless, it is at the very least probable that the angel speaks on these first two occasions as well. We should also take note of the facts that on the sixth terrace the angel paraphrases a Beatitude in Italian rather than reciting a phrase from it in Latin (
Purg
. XXIV.151–154) and that, on the seventh, his practice is exactly as we find it here: Latin for the citation of the Beatitude, Italian for his concluding advice to Dante (
Purg
. XXVII.8–9; 10–12). And there is one further common element in the second and seventh scenes: in all the others there is specific reference to the angel’s wing or feathers erasing a “P” from Dante’s forehead; in these two scenes there is no such description, thus leading us to speculate that the angel’s Italian utterance is probably meant to coincide with the erasure. It seems likely that here the angel speaks, addressing Dante in Italian.
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40–45.
   The protagonist, now freed, as we perhaps are meant to understand, from the P of Envy, is rapidly improving. It is he, and not Virgil, who insists on using the traveling time for self-improvement; he would like, in a sort of postlude to the terrace of Envy, to understand the remark of Guido del Duca (
Purg
. XIV.86–87): “O race of men, why do you set your hearts on things that of necessity cannot be shared?” The moral consequence of such affection is to envy the possessor of what one longs for but cannot have; we remember that Satan, barely created (see
Par
. XXIX.55–57), immediately was prideful against his Maker (because of his envy of His power).
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46–57.
   Virgil’s gloss on Guido’s words in the last canto distinguishes earthly desires for individual possessions from heavenly enjoyment of the common good. Commentators, beginning with Pietro di Dante (1340), cite the following passage from Augustine’s
City of God
(XV.v): “nullo [enim modo] fit minor, accedente seu permanente consorte, possessio bonitatis, quam tanto latius quanto concordius individua sociorum possidet charitas” ([goodness] is in no way lessened when it is shared, whether fleetingly or permanently, but grows the more the love of it spreads in others—Latin quoted from the version found in Pietro’s commentary).
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58–63.
   If Dante’s will to learn is good, his capacities still flag, held back by his earthly view of riches and of the very nature of possession, which he can only conceive as selfish. In
Convivio
(III.xv.10), Dante had understood very well what his fictive self here still does not comprehend: “li santi non hanno tra loro invidia” (the saints have no envious feelings about one another). Scartazzini (1900) was perhaps the first commentator to produce this citation in this context.
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67–75.
   Virgil’s final resolution of Dante’s problem insists on the centrality of love as antidote to envy. Indeed, words for love (
amore, carità, amare, ama
) occur four times within seven lines. Barolini (Baro.1992.1), note 39, p. 330, also notes the insistence on
più
(more) in vv. 55–62 (an astounding eight occurrences in eight lines, the densest presence of a single word in any passage of the poem, one might add) and here (vv. 73–74), perhaps underlining the need for the incremental conceptual refinement necessary for the redefinition of human affection toward a better end.
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