Purgatorio (92 page)
Authors: Dante
134.
The noun
regge
represents a relatively rare term (one never used elsewhere by Dante) for the main portal of a church. Heilbronn (Heil.1984.1), p. 5, suggests that “like a cathedral door, the gate of Purgatory is the mystical image of the gate of heaven.”
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139–145.
This passage, too, has caused a great deal of difficulty. Heilbronn (Heil.1984.1), a Dante scholar with a musical background, has dealt with a number of the issues that have puzzled readers and offers a helpful review of the extensive discussion. Some of the essential matters in dispute involve the words
tuono, voce, suono
, and
organo
.
According to her,
tuono
(understood as “a note” and not as “thunder”) should be seen as positive, since it is the sound that accompanies a soul’s entrance into purgatory;
voce
and
suono
are, respectively, technical terms for the human voice and an inanimate, instrumental sound (pp. 6–7), while
organo
refers either to polyphonic singing or singing accompanied by an organ. Heilbronn is illuminating about the use of impressively large organs in churches in the tenth and eleventh centuries (pp. 8–10). Giacalone (1968) points out that Dante himself had described an organist as accompanying a song (
Dve
II.viii.5–6) and Bosco/Reggio, influenced by the paper given by Damilano in 1974, remind us that one of Dante’s commentators, Cristoforo Landino (1481), grandnephew of the famous organist Francesco Landino, is of the opinion that the practice was to alternate passages of singing and organ-playing in church services and that this is referred to by Dante here.
Dante believes he hears the words of a hymn being sung (and we must imagine that, if there was actual singing to greet his coming [Dante only says that he
seemed
to hear voices], it was done by angels, since the penitents we eventually see in the next canto, the prideful, are bent under their weights and far from lyrical; however, this harmonious sound may issue from the gate itself). “Te Deum laudamus” has an interesting history in the commentaries. (For the text of the hymn in Latin and English see Singleton’s gloss to verse 140.) Benvenuto claims that St. Ambrose wrote this hymn after he had served as St. Augustine’s spiritual doctor and cured him of his terrible errors (in Milan shortly before Augustine’s conversion); it is thus, Benvenuto continues, a most fitting accompaniment to Dante’s—another great intellect’s—turning to penance. Other early commentators also associate the hymn with Augustine’s conversion, whether it was sung while he was being baptized or spoken by Ambrose in his sermon on that occasion or, indeed, according to Francesco da Buti, spontaneously spoken responsively by these two great men on that day. While in our time it is not believed to have been composed by Ambrose, in Dante’s it was. That Dante should have chosen to present himself, entering purgatory, as a new (and better) Julius Caesar and as the new Augustine is both altogether extraordinary and completely Dantean. (For the opinion that Dante presents himself as being like Augustine in the sins he must conquer, lust and bad philosophizing, see Hollander [Holl.1969.1], p. 165n.)
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1–6.
The opening verses of the canto tell us that Dante is obeying the angel’s warning (IX.132) not to look back (in this potentially resembling one of the disciples of Jesus even more than Lot’s wife or Orpheus—see note to
Purg
. IX.131–132) and that the gate of purgatory makes such noise because it is so infrequently opened, since most human beings prefer to pretend that their crooked way is straight and spend eternity in hell as a result. This last image will be reinforced immediately by the undulating path through the rock that the travelers must follow, reminiscent of the sinful life they have left behind, and eventually, as Singleton points out, by the misconception that what is in fact crooked is straight in Dante’s dream of the Siren (
Purg
. XIX.7–15).
Poletto’s commentary (1894) to this passage reminds the reader of the total contrast between the solitary state of Dante and his guide, both when they approached the angelic warder and now, having proceeded farther up the mountain (see verse 21), and the vast crowds of damned sinners found both inside the gate of hell and before Minos in
Inferno
III.119–120 and V.12.
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7–16.
As opposed to the wide and easy entrance to hell (
Inf
. V.20), that to purgatory is narrow and difficult. For the reference to the “needle’s eye” [verse 16]), see Christ’s words to the disciples (Matthew 19:24): “And further I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Virgil insists on the need for
arte
, or skill in navigating a tight spot, apparently so as not to allow Dante to be wounded by the sharp edges of the rock’s outcroppings, and thus in not following the shortest path along this labyrinthine passageway, but the one that moves back and forth from the farther wall in order to avoid the protuberances on the nearer.
His reference to the waning moon (see
Inf
. XX.127, where we learn the moon was full on Thursday night) portrays the dark crescent in that body as leading it toward the horizon as it sets. It is now Monday morning; the moon was full 3.5 days ago and set in the western sky exactly at sunrise. With four days of retardation, fifty minutes per day, it is now setting approximately three hours and twenty minutes after sunrise. Since Dante awoke before the gate just after 8
AM
(
Purg
. IX.44), it is perhaps slightly more than an hour later. In that time he has been admitted by the warder and made his way with Virgil through the “eye of the needle.”
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19.
This verse distances Virgil from Dante by insisting on his freedom from the body’s weight and yet equates the two travelers as being equally uninformed as to their impending choices. We have known that Virgil is not proficient in the ways of purgatory from the outset (
Purg
. II.61–63); now that we are in true purgatory the point is underlined.
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22–23.
See Toscano (Tosc.1989.1), pp. 207–8, on two debates among the commentators: Does this wall make a right or an obtuse angle with the smooth pavement? Do the penitents observe what is sculpted on the wall or not? Toscano strongly supports the notion that the wall is set at an obtuse angle so that the penitents are able to see what is depicted on it. If this were not the case, he continues, God’s art would be wasted on them, unable to move their heads high enough to see the instructive decoration, which would, without their observation, be mere ornament. If the terraces are cut into the side of the mountain and if this verse, as many commentators believe, indicates that the inner bank of every terrace is part of the tapered shape of the mountain as a whole, then Toscano is correct. However, should we ever be forced to decide that, as Pietrobono (1946), Mattalia (1960), and Vazzana (Vazz.1970.1, pp. 65–67) believe, this terrace (and every other one?) has a perpendicular wall as its inner border, we would also probably deduce that, in God’s realm, even stiff-necked penitents will somehow be able to see all of the sculpting that is put there for their instruction. (Dante’s illustrators are not much help in this respect; if one examines the two illustrations of the purgatorial mount found in the
Dante Encyclopedia
[Lans.2000.1], pp. 725 and 729, one finds that one shows the first condition, the other, the second.) Since Dante never clarified this point and since the manuscript tradition of the line (verse 30) crucial to its interpretation itself has caused much uncertainty, we really cannot say what the meaning is. Bosco/Reggio (1979) contrive a compromise: the lower part of the wall is slanted, but the rest of it is perpendicular. This might solve certain problems, but cannot be supported by the text.
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30.
For some of the problems associated with this verse see note to vv. 22–23.
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31–33.
Art is clearly a major theme of this canto. We hear now of the aesthetic superiority of God’s intaglios over the work of the sculptor Polycletus or the creative genius of nature herself. At verse 97 we learn, not of Dante’s instruction, but of his delight in the intaglios. Near the canto’s close we are told in a simile of the genuine distress that can be caused by our looking at a sculpted figure of a crunched human shape in a corbel (131–134). All these aesthetic moments have at their root the experience of art as moving its audience by its mimetic capacity. The morality of the art found on this terrace is not to be doubted, but in this canto (as opposed to the next) we at first find art treasured for purely aesthetic reasons (but see note to vv. 97–99).
The words that make their way through the three descriptions of intaglios in vv. 31–81 insist on the artistic nature of what the protagonist sees: forms of
intaglio
: 32, 38, 55; of
imagine
: 39, 41, 62; of
storia
: 52, 71, 73. This art of God, which some commentators have looked upon as uncannily predicting the eventual sculpture of Michelangelo, may be more advanced than that of mere mortals, and even of nature, but it somehow does not seem very far removed from that of Dante himself.
Polycletus, Athenian sculptor of the fifth century
B
.
C
., for Dante represented the height of classical Greek art. Torraca (1905) points out that previous thirteenth-century Italian writers cited him in a similar way. Sources of information about him were found in Cicero, Quintilian, and Pliny. And Aristotle, mentioning him in the
Nichomachean Ethics
, brought him to the attention of St. Thomas. And so, even if Italian vernacular writers of this period had never seen his work, they could refer to it as Dante does here.
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34–45.
The first example of each virtue (here Humility), opposed to the capital vice purged on each of the seven terraces, is always Mary. These four tercets are spare and central in their presentation of the Annunciation: only Gabriel and Mary are seen, minus the “background” expected by any medieval reader, familiar with the iconography of this moment: dove, ray of light, garden, etc. As the Ottimo (1333) has it, the “long-standing ban” had been in effect since the time recorded in Genesis 3 (the Fall) and was only rescinded when Christ harrowed hell.
The sculpted forms are so vivid that they actually seem to speak. Thus does Dante recast the key spoken moments of Luke 1:26–38, Gabriel’s charge and Mary’s humble acceptance of it.
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46–54.
Bosco/Reggio make explicit what is almost said by many of those commentators who deal with the phrase in verse 53, “varcai Virgilio” (I went past Virgil): it is a fine, realistic detail with no further significance. Yet this entire passage, in which Virgil gets Dante to stop enjoying so deeply the representation of Gabriel and Mary and to make himself available to more of God’s art, has certain overtones that might cast a different light on the relationship between the two poets here. The Annunciation was nearly, we might reflect, the subject of Virgil’s fourth
Eclogue
, the child to be born to a virgin that, had he only known which child and which virgin, might have saved him. It is this scene from which Virgil, in all innocence, pulls Dante away. And, while what follows merely describes Dante’s moving past Virgil, who had been standing between him and the first intaglio, from left to right, so as better to inspect the next work, it also describes physically what has a moral status, that is, Dante surpasses Virgil as an artist because he is more available to the meaning of God’s art. (In this vein see Barolini [Baro.1984.1], p. 278.)
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55–69.
As
Inferno
has readied us to observe, Dante will now couple his subordinate exemplary figures as scriptural and classical, more specifically Old Testament and Roman. This passage consolidates key elements of the narrative concerning David’s bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem: his dancing before it, his wife Michal’s scorn, and her resultant barrenness (II Samuel 6:1–23).
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56–57.
Uzzah’s presumption in attempting to assist Him who requires no help of any kind is related in II Samuel 6:6–7: he tried to steady the Ark when the movement of the oxen seemed about to topple it; for this God strikes him down immediately, killing him for his prideful insistence on a mission not enjoined. For Dante’s complex and amusing acknowledgment, both here and, more specifically, in his eleventh
Epistle
that he is, in some ways, the “new Uzzah,” see Barolini (Baro.1992.1), p. 132, and Hollander (Holl.1999.2).
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