Purgatorio (107 page)

19–21.
   Virgil, responding to Dante’s request, carries his analysis of the loving human mind to the next level, the role of the rational soul in determining human choice and, therefore, action. This tercet establishes the subject of Virgil’s difficult clarification (vv. 22–39): how mind (the rational soul, created directly by God and instilled in the embryo last [see
Purg
. XXV.67–75]) reacts appetitively to external things.
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22–27.
   The
apprensiva
(power of perception), already implicitly referred to in Dante’s apostrophe of the
imaginativa
(faculty of imagination) in
Purgatorio
XVII.13–15, is the faculty of perception that reacts to the capturing of an image (referred to here as an
intenzione
) of external reality in the
imaginazione
or
fantasia
(see note to XVII.13–18). The mind, as opposed to the “natural desire” of the senses (see
Purg
. XVII.93 for this distinction), which is always errorless, is responsible for its choices and may err. If its perception inclines toward what it contemplates, that is what we call love.
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28–33.
   Desire, love in action, now continues by extending toward its goal and remaining in this state as long as it takes pleasure in its appetites. (For fire as an example of “natural desire,” see note to
Purg
. XVII.91–92.) Thus here Dante is comparing intellectual desire to natural desire, but also insisting on the distance between them. Natural desire can never be culpable (e.g., fire always “desires” to rise—that is its natural inclination). There is perhaps no moment in the poem of greater danger to its essential philosophical position. Is human desire—for money, food, or sexual pleasure—not as “natural” as this? Does anyone
not
desire these things? Dante’s attempt to persuade us, as he may well have realized, reflects that of another
dottore
and
maestro
, Jesus. He, as the Gospels amply testify, also spoke frequently, in his parables, in terms of human desires that all could understand, e.g., of money, agriculture, marriage. In all cases the listener is encouraged, even impelled, to understand that such pleasures, as great as they may be, will seem as nothing compared to the joys of Heaven.

Arriving at this point in the argument, a reader would have to be pardoned for believing that whatever good the spirit of love pursues is ipso facto good, just as the protagonist himself will shortly seem to believe (vv. 43–45). But what is the nature of the “moto spiritale” (movement of the spirit) of the “captive mind”? That question is reflected in the crucial and concluding portion of Virgil’s discourse.
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34–39.
   The main candidates for this unenviable denomination, the errant folk who believe that
all
love is good (a proposition, as we have seen, that we might have considered unassailable a moment ago), have been Epicureans. In the modern period this view is first offered by Scartazzini (1900) but then is held by many twentieth-century commentators. Grabher (1934) is of the opinion that this is the position of all love poets, including the younger Dante. His view, sometimes combined with that of Scartazzini, has grown increasingly attractive to recent commentators. Clearly, anyone who believes that love is in itself and always praiseworthy is among this group.

The “imprint” on the “wax” of our love becomes the crucial symbolic expression of the concept developed here. The “wax” clearly refers to the innate human potential to love, which is “stamped” by the image that the mind has extracted from reality; that “stamp” may either be worthy or unworthy, while the “wax” is always worthy.
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40–45.
   It is, despite Virgil’s last insistence on the (implicit) need for the proper exercise of the free will in choosing the objects of one’s desire, understandable that Dante, up to this point, understands that the mind is completely responsive to internalized (by the
apprensiva
) external stimuli (the
intenzione
—see verse 23), and thus irreprehensible in whatever choice it makes.
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46–48.
   This passage offers perhaps the only apparently material evidence in the poem that would tie both Virgil and Beatrice to an allegorical status, his role being that of Reason, hers, Faith. But see Hollander (Holl.1990.1), p. 42, n. 2: “It is from Virgil’s lips that we first hear the name Beatrice … in
Purgatorio
: VI.46; XV.77; XVIII.48. In her first three nominal presences in this
cantica
…she is associated first with hope (VI.32), then with love (XV.68; XV.71; XV,74), then with faith.” Thus associated with the three theological virtues, Beatrice can be seen as possessing all of them; she probably should not be seen as representing any one of them, or as having an “allegorical” status in this poem.
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49–75.
   The three cantos at the center of
Purgatorio
devote what may seem immoderate space to what Benedetto Croce disliked in Dante, his “non-poesia,” his “structure,” his mere
allotria
(the “extraneous matter” of philosophy or theology that Croce deprecated in Dante; opposing such views, Salsano [Sals.1967.1], p. 542, speaks of the
Comedy
as “un poema e non un libro di poesie”). Marco’s long speech in XVI (65–129), Virgil’s in XVII (91–139), and Virgil’s concluding two in this canto (16–39; 49–75) should be looked upon, as should the related discursive portions of Cantos XXIV and XXV, as part of a continuing development of a complex statement about the nature and function of love, presented from different vantage points. In Canto XXIV, Dante’s presentation of the Holy Spirit’s creative role in helping to make the writings of a handful of poets acceptable to God prepares for the following treatment in Canto XXV of the way the Holy Spirit is breathed into all of us, thus explaining how eventually a very few of us may become acceptable to God as His saints in Paradise. In these three cantos Marco the Lombard explains the need for proper civil governance because our free will may elsewise lead us astray, while Virgil takes up a related topic, the need for us individually to use our free will correctly in choosing and responding to the objects of our attention and affection.
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49–60.
   The only “substantial form” to be both distinct from matter and joined to it is the human soul, which is formed by pure divine intellect (as are the angels) and by emotional and vegetative powers (as are the beasts). Its
specifica vertute
(defining disposition), as we learn at vv. 55–57, is composed of primal intellect and primal will, and is only perceptible in the action of the soul, not in itself. Now, leaving intellection out of consideration, Virgil continues: We have no recollection or current understanding of our original inclination (to love God), yet we do demonstrate its presence in us, as the eagerness of bees for making honey reveals their “defining disposition.” This kind of (natural) will exists beyond and before moral assent.
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61–66.
   This innate will (see
Purg
. XXI.105,
la virtù che vuole
[the power that wills]) must accord with
la virtù che consiglia
(the faculty that counsels), the higher intellect that should govern all our choices; our ability to choose good and to discard evil affections is the ground for the measurement of our moral condition.
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67–69.
   Aristotle’s
Ethics
is probably Dante’s main source for his views on morality (a view supported by Benvenuto da Imola). However, to account for the plurality of the reference, Poletto (1894) sensibly refers to Dante’s own earlier phrasing (found in the words of Virgil), “I speak of Aristotle and of Plato / and of many others” (
Purg
. III.43–44).
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70–75.
   Virgil’s lengthy discourse concludes with his final insistence on the pivotal role of free will in individual moral responsibility and looks forward (as Benvenuto was perhaps the first to realize) to Beatrice’s remarks on the subject in
Paradiso
V.19–24, asseverating that the freedom of the will is the greatest of God’s gifts to humankind. Many of the early commentators find this a convenient place for them to reassert the “allegorical” valence of Beatrice, here interpreted as “Theology.” In the past 150 years many commentators are content to leave the allegorical equation in abeyance, merely referring to Beatrice as herself.
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76–81.
   Returning to narrative, the poet returns to telling the time. The moon, as the slowest “planet” in Dante’s astronomy, is fittingly the celestial body referred to on the terrace of Sloth. Its appearance is compared by Benvenuto to the semicircular fire in a lighthouse, glowing throughout the night.

The moon, Dante would seem to be saying, was roughly on the same path taken by the sun when it sets in the southwest (when seen from Rome) in late November, between Sardinia and Corsica.
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82–84.
   The protagonist’s gratitude to Virgil is expressed with a salute to his birthplace, Pietola (“Andes” in Roman times). Some early commentators read the phrase “più che villa mantoana” to mean “more than the city Mantua,” while the meaning is nearly certainly “more than any Mantuan town,” i.e., any other town in the vicinity of the city, not Mantua itself, as Padoan (Pado.1967.1), p. 688n., agrees.
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87–88.
   Again a detail—Dante’s somnolence—establishes a connection with Sloth.
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89–90.
   These penitents, as opposed to the wrathful, move in the same counterclockwise direction that is followed by Dante and Virgil. It would seem that, while the movement of Dante to the right is morally determined, that of the penitents is not, is rather the result of aesthetic considerations. Review of the various groups that are in motion suggests that such is the case. Below the gate, we see that the excommunicate are moving rightwards (
Purg
. III.59), while the late-repentant seem to be heading to the left (V.23). On the terraces, the prideful seem to be moving right (X.100), while the wrathful are headed left (XV.142). Here in Sloth the penitents come from behind Virgil and Dante but are moving in the same direction (XVIII.90). Farther up the mountain the penitent gluttons are also moving counterclockwise (XXIII.19–20), while the two distinct bands of the lustful proceed in two different directions (XXVI.29).
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91–96.
   This is a fairly rare occurrence in
Purgatorio
, a simile based explicitly on classical materials (but see
Purg
. IX.34–42, for the similetic reference to Statius’s Achilles). And there will not be another (now based on a passage in Lucan) until
Purgatorio
XXIV.64–69.

Ismenus and Asopus are names of rivers, the first flowing through the city of Thebes, the second near it. Beginning with Jacopo della Lana (1324), commentators have offered the opinion, from time to time, that Dante’s source here is Statius (
Thebaid
IX). Ismenos is named at IX.404, his “brother” Asopos at IX.449. The passage includes two references to the orgiastic Bacchic rites (IX.434–436; 478–480) to which Dante here refers.
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97–98.
   Running in a group to counteract the painful memory of their solitary slothful behaviors on earth, all these gathered penitents may put contemporary readers in mind of the massed crowds of runners in metropolitan marathons.
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99–138.
   With the exception of the concluding interaction with the angel in the following canto, separated by Dante’s sleep and dream from the action on the fourth terrace, all the usual “events” of any terrace are here condensed—in the compressed style appropriate to the description of the newly zealous—into these forty verses. All terraces include the following features in the same order: (1) description of the physical aspect of the terrace, (2) exemplars of the countering virtue, (3) description of the penitents, (4) recitation of their sins by particular penitents, (5) exemplars of the vice, (6) appearance to Dante of the angel representing the opposing virtue.

We might want to reflect on the extraordinary artisanship of the presentation of the exemplary material on the earlier terraces, things not matched by what we find in earlier medieval poems: the “speaking” (and odoriferous) intaglios of Pride, the voices streaking overhead in Envy, the ecstatic visions of Wrath. It is as though Dante had used up all the brilliant new techniques of presentation of which he could think and now, for the rest of the ascent, subsides to the perfectly acceptable artistic level of utterance, leaving us to marvel at what he had done before. On three of the last four terraces the names (sometimes accompanied by reference to significant deeds) of all exemplary figures are simply called out by the penitents, while on the terrace of Gluttony, in a variant, the two trees do the talking.
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