Purgatorio (106 page)

73.
   The protagonist’s inner apostrophe of his flagging power of locomotion shows his awareness of the special kind of nocturnal debility afflicting souls on this mountain. As we will see, his physical condition matches that of a man who is slothful.
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79–80.
   Since, on the terrace of Wrath, Dante’s learning experiences occurred in darkness, and since it is dark as he enters the fourth terrace, he assumes that he may be instructed in virtue by what he will hear.
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82–87.
   Just as the poem is now entering its second half and this
cantica
is arriving at its midpoint, so the experience of the repentance of the seven capital vices has come to its central moment with Sloth. From Dante’s question and Virgil’s answer we also understand that there is a gulf separating the vices below, all of which begin in the love of what is wrongful, from the rest, all of which result from insufficient or improper desire to attain the good. The sin purged here is called
acedia
in Latin and
accidia
in Italian. (For a lengthy consideration see Wenzel’s book [Wenz.1967.1.]; see also Andrea Ciotti’s entry, which sometimes takes issue with Wenzel, “accidia e accidiosi” in
ED
I [1970]; for a wider view of
acedia
see Kuhn [Kuhn.1976.1], with special reference to Dante on pp. 56–59.) In the poem, the word will appear in the next canto, used retrospectively to indicate the sin repented here (
Purg
. XVIII.132); however, in adjectival form it was present earlier (
Inf
. VII.123—see note to
Inf
. VII.118–126). Scartazzini (1900) brings St. Thomas (
ST
I.lxiii.2) into play as the one who affords a clear understanding of this sin, a kind of spiritual torpor accompanied by (or even causing) physical weariness.
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88–90.
   This second extended “diagram” is excused, as was the first (
Inferno
XI), by the need to linger awhile before continuing the journey. Compare verse 84 and
Inferno
XI.10–15.
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91–139.
   The rest of the canto is given over, without interruption, to Virgil’s discourse on the nature of love. It misses only by a little being the longest speech we have heard spoken in the poem since Ugolino’s in
Inferno
XXXIII.4–75, beaten out by Sordello’s recounting of the current denizens of the Valley of the Princes (
Purg
. VII.87–136) and of course by Marco the Lombard’s discourse on the related failures of Church and empire (
Purg
. XVI.65–129).
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91–92.
   The given of Virgil’s whole speech is the universality of love. It proceeds from God in all His creation, and from all things that He has created. In the rational beings (angels and humans), it returns to Him; in the lower animals, to one another and to their habitat; in insentient bodies, to their habitat (e.g., water lilies on ponds) or place of origin (e.g., fire always wanting to reach the sky beneath the moon). See
Convivio
III.iii.2–5, cited by Singleton (1973).
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93–96.
   Love is of two kinds, natural or “mental.” Natural love always desires the utmost good, and for rational beings that is God. Thus all humans
naturally
desire the good. If that were the only love that motivated us, there would be no sin in the world. However, there
is
another kind of love, one reached by a mental effort, and thus found only in angels and humans. (Since angels have all made their will known, to love God eternally, only humans will be the subjects of Virgil’s discourse.) Human beings, using their free wills, may fall into three kinds of sin: choosing the wrong object for their loves (sins repented on the first three terraces); loving the good deficiently (as do the slothful, whom we are about to encounter); loving the good excessively (the sins repented on the three highest terraces, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust). For discussion of the way in which Dante, unlike Andreas Capellanus and Guido Cavalcanti, is interested in affirming only spiritual love, see Pasquazi (Pasq.1970.1), pp. 227–31.
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97–102.
   The lines essentially repeat what has been established in vv. 91–96, as though Dante sensed the difficulty most readers would be likely to have with this conceptual poetry.
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103–105.
   The argument pauses for its first affirmation: whether we sin or use our (free) wills well, the results observed come from our ways of loving—and our merit or demerit accords with the nature of our loves.
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106–111.
   The first consequence of this doctrine is to remove two possible motivations from consideration: hatred of self or hatred of God, both of which are declared to be impossible. Singleton points out that sinners like Capaneus (
Inf
. XIV) and Vanni Fucci (
Inf
. XXV) indeed do demonstrate a hatred for God, a feeling possible only in hell, but not in this life on earth. The sins of suicide and blasphemy, however, surely seem to contradict this theoretical notion.
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112–124.
   Hatred of self or of God having been discarded as motivations for immoral human conduct, hatred of our neighbor remains, expressed in (1) prideful desire that his success be reversed so that we may be his superior, (2) in envious desire that his success be thwarted, (3) in wrathful desire to take revenge for the harm he has inflicted on us. We realize—although we are told it in case we might not—that these are the sins of Pride, Envy, and Wrath that we have just finished visiting.
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124–125.
   The actual midpoint of the poem lies between these two verses, numbers 7116 and 7117 of the poem’s 14,233. For discussion of the debate surrounding the fact that the line lengths of the seven central cantos of the
Comedy
form an apparently deliberate pattern, see the Princeton Dante Project, commentary to
Purgatorio
XVII.133–139.
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125–126.
   These two verses refer to all of the other four sins as a group united in at least seeking the good (as was not the case for the first three), but imperfectly.
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127–132.
   Virgil now defines Sloth, the first of these two better kinds of sin, as “laggard love.” Thus, by failing to respond to God’s offered love more energetically, the slothful are more rebellious to Him than are the avaricious, gluttonous, and lustful, who are pursuing a secondary good rather than avoiding the primary one. In Dante’s day, Sloth was a sin particularly identified with the clergy, with reference not so much to their physical laziness as to their spiritually laggard lives. See Kuhn (Kuhn.1976.1), pp. 39–64.
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133–139.
   This secondary good has been referred to earlier at verse 98 and will occupy Cantos XX through XXVII, broken into three categories: money, food, and sex.
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1.
   This canto continues the flow of the last with no demarcation in the text itself of a terminus or of a new beginning. As Bosco points out in his introductory remarks to the two cantos, they form a unit developed on a chiastic pattern:

Further, these two cantos form a larger unit with
Purgatorio
XVI, which is similarly divided into two large blocks of material: 1–63 (narrative) and 64–145 (Marco’s instruction). In this way the numerical center of the
Commedia
, cantos 49–51, is made more noticeable. (For the midpoint with respect to the number of lines in the poem see the note to
Purg
. XVII.118–119.)

Ricci (Ricc.1970.1), p. 252, suggests that Dante spreads Virgil’s full canto’s worth (145 verses) of speechifying over two cantos so as not to strain the reader’s patience.
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2–3.
   Virgil’s “Scholastic” credentials seem strong. See Tarozzi’s appreciation (Taro.1901.1), p. 7: Virgil “here represents the idealized figure of the medieval docent.” A close analysis of his discourse in the preceding canto, such as may be found, in English, in Singleton’s commentary, reveals a line of argument that is closely based on Thomistic texts. In keeping with such discourse and for the first time since
Inferno
XVI.48, Virgil is saluted by his pupil as “professor”
(dottore)
. For the other terms used to describe Virgil’s role as guide in the poem, see note to
Inferno
II.140.

In fact, Virgil has rarely been referred to or addressed by Dante with such fervent admiration as here and shortly later in this canto, when he will be “padre verace” (true father—7), “Maestro” (Master—10), and then “father” again (13). See note to vv. 17–18.
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4.
   In this and the next canto the protagonist’s forward movement in understanding is underlined by the adjective
nuovo
(new): used here for his new “thirst,” at verse 141 for his “new thought” in reaction to the departure of the penitents in Sloth, and at XIX.56, in his reference to the new dream he has just had on this terrace.
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8.
   Dante’s “timid wish” should probably be considered related to intellectual sloth (see
Purg
. XVII.130,
lento amore
[laggard love]). How could Dante have considered himself “timid” in seeking the truth? Had he involved himself in a less than urgent affection for the good, the charge would seem appropriate. Since it is the author who makes the charge, it might seem that he himself believed that he did not always display the zeal necessary for loving well.
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13–15.
   Why, one might ask, after Virgil’s long speech in the last canto, should Dante want Virgil to “expound” love when he seems just now to have finished (with suitable fanfare) doing precisely that? What the protagonist means is “expatiate upon,” “explain more precisely,” the argument just now presented. The word
dimostrare
is here, in fact, a verb based on the Latin noun
demonstratio
, as used to refer to the development of proofs by means of syllogistic demonstration. See
Paradiso
XXIV.96.
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17–18.
   Virgil’s words reflect Matthew 15:14, where Jesus says that the Pharisees are blind guides of the blind who follow them, adding that guide and flock shall all end up falling into a ditch.

In
Convivio
I.xi.4 Dante cites this passage, directing its barb against “those wicked Italians who praise the vernacular of others while disparaging their own” (
Conv
. I.xi.1) and who are therefore likewise headed toward disaster. As Francesco Mazzoni argues (“Latini, Brunetto,”
ED
III [1971], p. 580b]), in this connection it is difficult not to think of Dante’s fellow Florentine Brunetto Latini, who wrote his encyclopedic
Tresor
in French rather than in his native vernacular (see Pézard [Peza.1950.1] for extensive development of this idea). Also to be considered are the words, written shortly before or shortly after this passage (on the problems of dating
Dve
and
Conv
. see Hollander [Holl.2001.1], pp. 54–55), in
De vulgari eloquentia
I.xiii.1, when Dante “exiles” Brunetto from the illustrious and courtly vernacular that he is championing, relegating him to the ash heap of the municipal vernacular, the “street talk” that is to be avoided by serious poets. In what seems to have been a change of heart, Brunetto, in the fifteenth canto of
Inferno
, will be treated generously as Dante’s vernacular “teacher” (
Inf
. XV.85), just as Virgil was his first Latin guide. It seems clear that these two are joined only by Guido Guinizzelli as explicitly paternal figures of writerly authority for the Tuscan poet.

Dante refers to, whether as protagonist or as poet, various “fathers” in the course of the poem (this is to exclude “fathers” addressed by other characters). The parenthetic reference is to the first appearance of each “father.”