Già era 'l sole a l'orizzonte giunto
lo cui meridïan cerchio coverchia
Ierusalèm col suo più alto punto;
e la notte, che opposita a lui cerchia,
uscia di Gange fuor con le Bilance,
che le caggion di man quando soverchia;
sì che le bianche e le vermiglie guance,
là dov' i' era, de la bella Aurora
per troppa etate divenivan rance.
Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora,
come gente che pensa a suo cammino,
che va col cuore e col corpo dimora.
Ed ecco, qual, sorpreso dal mattino,
per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia
giù nel ponente sovra 'l suol marino,
cotal m'apparve, s'io ancor lo veggia,
un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto,
che 'l muover suo nessun volar pareggia.
Dal qual com' io un poco ebbi ritratto
l'occhio per domandar lo duca mio,
rividil più lucente e maggior fatto.
Poi d'ogne lato ad esso m'appario
un non sapeva che bianco, e di sotto
a poco a poco un altro a lui uscìo.
Lo mio maestro ancor non facea motto,
mentre che i primi bianchi apparver ali;
allor che ben conobbe il galeotto,
gridò: “Fa, fa che le ginocchia cali.
Ecco l'angel di Dio: piega le mani;
omai vedrai di sì fatti officiali.
Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani,
sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo
che l'ali sue, tra liti sì lontani.
Vedi come l'ha dritte verso 'l cielo,
trattando l'aere con l'etterne penne,
che non si mutan come mortal pelo.”
Poi, come più e più verso noi venne
l'uccel divino, più chiaro appariva;
per che l'occhio da presso nol sostenne,
ma chinail giuso; e quei sen venne a riva
con un vasello snelletto e leggero,
tanto che l'acqua nulla ne 'nghiottiva.
Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero,
tal che faria beato pur descripto;
e più di cento spirti entro sediero.
“In exitu Isräel de Aegypto”
cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce
con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto.
Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce;
ond' ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia:
ed el sen gì, come venne, veloce.
La turba che rimase lì, selvaggia
parea del loco, rimirando intorno
come colui che nove cose assaggia.
Da tutte parti saettava il giorno
lo sol, ch'avea con le saette conte
di mezzo 'l ciel cacciato Capricorno,
quando la nova gente alzò la fronte
ver' noi, dicendo a noi: “Se voi sapete,
mostratene la via di gire al monte.”
E Virgilio rispuose: “Voi credete
forse che siamo esperti d'esto loco;
ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete.
Dianzi venimmo, innanzi a voi un poco,
per altra via, che fu sì aspra e forte,
che lo salire omai ne parrà gioco.”
L'anime, che si fuor di me accorte,
per lo spirare, ch'i' era ancor vivo,
maravigliando diventaro smorte.
E come a messagger che porta ulivo
tragge la gente per udir novelle,
e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo,
così al viso mio s'affisar quelle
anime fortunate tutte quante,
quasi oblïando d'ire a farsi belle.
Io vidi una di lor trarresi avante
per abbracciarmi, con sì grande affetto,
che mosse me a far lo somigliante.
Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l'aspetto!
tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,
e tante mi tornai con esse al petto.
Di maraviglia, credo, mi dipinsi;
per che l'ombra sorrise e si ritrasse,
e io, seguendo lei, oltre mi pinsi.
Soavemente disse ch'io posasse;
allor conobbi chi era, e pregai
che, per parlarmi, un poco s'arrestasse.
Rispuosemi: “Così com' io t'amai
nel mortal corpo, così t'amo sciolta:
però m'arresto; ma tu perché vai?”
“Casella mio, per tornar altra volta
là dov' io son, fo io questo vïaggio,”
diss' io; “ma a te com' è tanta ora tolta?”
Ed elli a me: “Nessun m'è fatto oltraggio,
se quei che leva quando e cui li piace,
più volte m'ha negato esto passaggio;
ché di giusto voler lo suo si face:
veramente da tre mesi elli ha tolto
chi ha voluto intrar, con tutta pace.
Ond' io, ch'era ora a la marina vòlto
dove l'acqua di Tevero s'insala,
benignamente fu' da lui ricolto.
A quella foce ha elli or dritta l'ala,
però che sempre quivi si ricoglie
qual verso Acheronte non si cala.”
E io: “Se nuova legge non ti toglie
memoria o uso a l'amoroso canto
che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie,
di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto
l'anima mia, che, con la sua persona
venendo qui, è affannata tanto!”
“Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona”
cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente,
che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.
Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente
ch'eran con lui parevan sì contenti,
come a nessun toccasse altro la mente.
Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti
a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto
gridando: “Che è ciò, spiriti lenti?
qual negligenza, quale stare è questo?
Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio
ch'esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.”
Come quando, cogliendo biado o loglio,
li colombi adunati a la pastura,
queti, sanza mostrar l'usato orgoglio,
se cosa appare ond' elli abbian paura,
subitamente lasciano star l'esca,
perch' assaliti son da maggior cura;
così vid' io quella masnada fresca
lasciar lo canto, e fuggir ver' la costa,
com' om che va, né sa dove rïesca;
né la nostra partita fu men tosta.
Already had the sun the horizon reached
Whose circle of meridian covers o'er
Jerusalem with its most lofty point,
And night that opposite to him revolves
Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales
That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth;
So that the white and the vermilion cheeks
Of beautiful Aurora, where I was,
By too great age were changing into orange.
We still were on the border of the sea,
Like people who are thinking of their road,
Who go in heart and with the body stay;
And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning,
Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red
Down in the West upon the ocean floor,
Appeared to me—may I again behold it!—
A light along the sea so swiftly coming,
Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled;
From which when I a little had withdrawn
Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor,
Again I saw it brighter grown and larger.
Then on each side of it appeared to me
I knew not what of white, and underneath it
Little by little there came forth another.
My Master yet had uttered not a word
While the first whiteness into wings unfolded;
But when he clearly recognised the pilot,
He cried: "Make haste, make haste to bow the knee!
Behold the Angel of God! fold thou thy hands!
Henceforward shalt thou see such officers!
See how he scorneth human arguments,
So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail
Than his own wings, between so distant shores.
See how he holds them pointed up to heaven,
Fanning the air with the eternal pinions,
That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!"
Then as still nearer and more near us came
The Bird Divine, more radiant he appeared,
So that near by the eye could not endure him,
But down I cast it; and he came to shore
With a small vessel, very swift and light,
So that the water swallowed naught thereof.
Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot;
Beatitude seemed written in his face,
And more than a hundred spirits sat within.
"In exitu Israel de Aegypto!"
They chanted all together in one voice,
With whatso in that psalm is after written.
Then made he sign of holy rood upon them,
Whereat all cast themselves upon the shore,
And he departed swiftly as he came.
The throng which still remained there unfamiliar
Seemed with the place, all round about them gazing,
As one who in new matters makes essay.
On every side was darting forth the day.
The sun, who had with his resplendent shafts
From the mid-heaven chased forth the Capricorn,
When the new people lifted up their faces
Towards us, saying to us: "If ye know,
Show us the way to go unto the mountain."
And answer made Virgilius: "Ye believe
Perchance that we have knowledge of this place,
But we are strangers even as yourselves.
Just now we came, a little while before you,
Another way, which was so rough and steep,
That mounting will henceforth seem sport to us."
The souls who had, from seeing me draw breath,
Become aware that I was still alive,
Pallid in their astonishment became;
And as to messenger who bears the olive
The people throng to listen to the news,
And no one shows himself afraid of crowding,
So at the sight of me stood motionless
Those fortunate spirits, all of them, as if
Oblivious to go and make them fair.
One from among them saw I coming forward,
As to embrace me, with such great affection,
That it incited me to do the like.
O empty shadows, save in aspect only!
Three times behind it did I clasp my hands,
As oft returned with them to my own breast!
I think with wonder I depicted me;
Whereat the shadow smiled and backward drew;
And I, pursuing it, pressed farther forward.
Gently it said that I should stay my steps;
Then knew I who it was, and I entreated
That it would stop awhile to speak with me.
It made reply to me: "Even as I loved thee
In mortal body, so I love thee free;
Therefore I stop; but wherefore goest thou?"
"My own Casella! to return once more
There where I am, I make this journey," said I;
"But how from thee has so much time be taken?"
And he to me: "No outrage has been done me,
If he who takes both when and whom he pleases
Has many times denied to me this passage,
For of a righteous will his own is made.
He, sooth to say, for three months past has taken
Whoever wished to enter with all peace;
Whence I, who now had turned unto that shore
Where salt the waters of the Tiber grow,
Benignantly by him have been received.
Unto that outlet now his wing is pointed,
Because for evermore assemble there
Those who tow'rds Acheron do not descend."
And I: "If some new law take not from thee
Memory or practice of the song of love,
Which used to quiet in me all my longings,
Thee may it please to comfort therewithal
Somewhat this soul of mine, that with its body
Hitherward coming is so much distressed."
"Love, that within my mind discourses with me,"
Forthwith began he so melodiously,
The melody within me still is sounding.
My Master, and myself, and all that people
Which with him were, appeared as satisfied
As if naught else might touch the mind of any.
We all of us were moveless and attentive
Unto his notes; and lo! the grave old man,
Exclaiming: "What is this, ye laggard spirits?
What negligence, what standing still is this?
Run to the mountain to strip off the slough,
That lets not God be manifest to you."
Even as when, collecting grain or tares,
The doves, together at their pasture met,
Quiet, nor showing their accustomed pride,
If aught appear of which they are afraid,
Upon a sudden leave their food alone,
Because they are assailed by greater care;
So that fresh company did I behold
The song relinquish, and go tow'rds the hill,
As one who goes, and knows not whitherward;
Nor was our own departure less in haste.
This elaborate way of telling time by the position of the sun and other stars in the heavens, inopportune in hell, where the sight of the sky is denied the travelers, will be a frequent feature of Purgatorio. The four main points of reference are here (and on other occasions), Jerusalem, site of the Crucifixion and thus the most significant point on earth; the Ganges, 90o to the east; the antipodes, 180o to the south; and Cádiz, in Spain, 270o around the circle of the meridian, a great circle arc over Jerusalem. This makes a right angle in its intersection with the plane made by the equator, which extends into a similar great-circle arc known as the horizon. Each of the four equidistant points covered by the meridian is six hours from the other. Thus we are told that it was 6pm in Jerusalem, midnight over India, and dawn here at the antipodes. The location of noon is left unexpressed, but we can understand that it is in fact over Cadiz, and may choose to understand that the omission forces us to supply this last indication and perhaps to consider that this is the place associated with Ulysses' departure on his 'mad flight' (Inf. XXVI.106-111), especially since the concluding verses of the last canto had so clearly reminded the reader of Ulysses' voyage (see the note to Purg. I.130-132 and Hollander, “Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 32-33).
The phrase at vv. 4-6 is complicated, but eventually comprehensible. In the northern hemisphere, when the nights grow longer than the day after the autumn solstice, the sun appears in Libra, as a result no longer a nighttime constellation, and thus the Scales 'fall from her [night's] hand.' However, in the northern hemisphere it is now just after the spring solstice and the night is found in Libra, while the sun is in Aries.
The mood of the travelers, compared by many, perhaps beginning with Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to this passage), to pilgrims on their way to earn indulgence for their sins, is not particularly eager. Rather, they seem to hesitate. Vittorio Russo (“Il canto II del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. III [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 243, cites Hebrews 11:13-16, with its insistence on the nature of life as a pilgrimage, as relevant to this tercet. That passage is contained in one of the most significant texts in the New Testament giving credence to the idea that those who were born before Christ were nonetheless responsible for and capable of believing in Christ to come (all of Heb. 11 insists on the faith found in the great figures of the Old Testament). But our pilgrims seem more at home with 'Egypt' than they are eager for the New Jerusalem, as were the Hebrews themselves in the desert (see Exodus 14:11-12; 16:2-3; 17:3) because they lacked a full measure of zeal for their journey. For a discussion of the hesitance that suffuses this canto see Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 [1982], pp. 53-70). As Poletto (comm. to this passage) was perhaps the first to note, the phrasing here reflects that of Vita nuova XIII.6, where, in a simile, Dante is unsure about the path he should pursue.
This is, perhaps surprisingly, the first simile of Purgatorio (there was a brief comparison at Purg. I.119-120; another at verse 11, just above). While the first canto (vv. 19-21) involved a special relationship to Venus, this canto turns instead to Mars, treated here, as was Venus there, as morning star. In his Convivio, where Dante associates the first seven heavens with the liberal arts, he says (II.xiii.20-24) that Mars may be compared to Music. He concludes (24): 'Moreover, Music attracts to itself the human spirits, which are, as it were, principally vapors of the heart, so that they almost completely cease their activity; this happens likewise to the entire soul when it hears music, and the virtue of all of them, as it were, runs to the spirit of sense, which receives the sound' (tr. Lansing). We shall see that these notions will come into play when Casella sings Dante's ode to the new pilgrims at the mountain's shore later in the canto. In his remarks on these verses, Bernardino Daniello was perhaps the first commentator to bring that passage in Convivio to bear on this text. But the valence of the passage as it is reflected here puts the alluring red light of Mars (and, later, listening to music, which is what Mars signifies in the earlier text) into a negative correspondence with the alacrity and whiteness of the swiftly approaching angel. Looking west toward Mars implies turning one's back on the sunrise to the east. Porena's commentary (to vv. 13-15) observes that Dante, as a Tuscan, was acquainted with this view of the sea, one found on the western – and not the eastern – shore of the Italian peninsula.
The opening verse of the simile has caused considerable difficulty because the early texts offered probably unacceptable readings and later attempts have been divided into two solutions, roughly as follows: either 'sul presso del mattino' (at the nearing of dawn) or 'sorpreso dal mattino' (covered over by the dawn). This last is Petrocchi's solution, and we have followed it, if at a distance, in our translation. Gabriele Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 79-81, supports Petrocchi's reading.
The gradual revelation of the approaching presence (more light, greater size, two elements of white that then resolve to three [two wings and the angel's 'body']) culminates in Virgil's recognition of the angelic nature of the steersman. For a brief account of the nature of and doctrinal problems inherent in Dante's angelology see Alison Cornish (“Angels,” The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing [New York: Garland, 2000], pp. 37-45).
The term galeotto (helmsman, steersman) has been used for Phlegyas, who carried Dante and Virgil across Styx in his skiff (Inf. VIII.17 – galeoto). It had previously been used by Francesca (Inf. V.137), as a proper noun, to cast blame upon the character Gallehault in the Arthurian romance that led, according to her, to her undoing. The present galeotto is surely to be understood as a better-intentioned guide. Dante has been cleansed by Virgil to be in the purified condition fitting for his presence before exactly such a being, 'il primo ministro... di paradiso' (Purg. I.98-99). Hell had its guardian demons; purgatory has guardian angels.
Virgil's two balanced exclamations insist on the supernatural abilities of the angel. The first has the effect of reminding us of Ulysses. Where Ulysses made wings of oars (Inf. XXVI.135), this traveler over the same seas before the mount of purgatory requires neither oar nor sail. The word for 'oar' was last heard in Ulysses' speech (as was the phrase 'suol marino' [ocean floor] of verse 15 at Inf. XXVI.129). The word for poop deck, poppa, introduced to the poem to describe Ulysses' position as captain of his ship (Inf. XXVI.124, repeated at XXVI.140) now recurs to set this celestial steersman against his less worthy counterpart (Purg. II.43). For this argument see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 34-35).
The second tercet, describing the heaven-directed wings of the angel, may remind us of Satan's (Inf. XXXIV.46-52) huge wings, if only by antithesis.
Lombardi, discussing this verse, pointed out that the 'uccel divino' (heavenly bird) stands in opposition to the demon Farfarello, a 'malvagio uccello' (filthy bird – Inf. XXII.96).
This is the first time in the poem that Dante is 'blinded by the light.' Such scenes will recur for the rest of the two final cantiche.
This detail almost necessarily reminds us of the contrary depiction of Charon's skiff in (Aen. VI.413-414), sinking into the water of the swamp beneath Aeneas's weight, as Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-42) was perhaps the first to note explicitly. See also Inferno VIII.25-27, when Dante's weight makes Phlegyas's skiff sink in the muddy water of the Styx. And see the note to Inferno III.136.
A much-debated text. The vast majority of codices and of commentators prefers the variant not chosen by Petrocchi: 'tal che parea beato per iscripto' (in such manner as to seem blessed by inscription). Petrocchi chooses the variant 'tal che faria beato pur descripto' (in such a way as to render blessed anyone who reads or hears him described). While we strongly side with the majority view, we have followed Petrocchi here as always. Were we to depart from him, our translation would run as follows: 'whose look made him seem inscribed in blessedness.' See this writer's earlier opinion (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 42): 'My own view is that the verse should be read in the spirit of Landino's gloss, which holds that he seemed 'inscribed, that is, confirmed in bliss,' in the sense (also tentatively lent support by Portirelli [comm. to vv. 44-45]) that he is written in the Book of Life' (see Apoc. 20:12 and discussion in Hollander [“Dante's 'Book of the Dead': A Note on Inferno XXIX, 57,” Studi Danteschi 54 (1982), pp. 31-51]. For the only other use in the Commedia of the past participle of scrivere as a verbal noun see Inferno XIX.54 – and see the similar usage in Convivio I.viii.5. In both these instances the verbal noun refers to a written document, as I believe it does here.' Portirelli (1804) says that the angel 'seemed blessed by eternal and irrevocable decree.' Most of the others – the vast majority of commentators – who read the line as 'parea beato per iscripto' interpret it to mean that the angel looks as though he were written on. Landino, Portirelli, and Hollander believe that he seems blessed because he is inscribed elsewhere, an at least potentially more convincing reading. Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 81-83, reopens the question of the reading of this line, but does not come to a firm conclusion about a preferable variant.
Dante's 'more than a hundred' is a poet's allowable indefinite number, but one based on a very good number indeed, one hundred, number of God (1 0 0 = 1) and of the number of cantos in this poem.
The arriving pilgrims, seated in the ship that carries them to purgation and eventual salvation, sing the Psalm of the Exodus, 114-115 in the modern Bible, 113 in the Vulgate. The text states clearly that they sing all of it in their shared exhilaration. For the informing pattern of the Exodus in this canto (and in the poem as a whole) see, among others, Singleton (“'In exitu Israel de Aegypto,'” Annual Report of the Dante Society 78 [1960], pp. 1-24); Tucker (“'In exitu Isräel de Aegypto': the Divine Comedy in the Light of the Easter Liturgy,” The American Benedictine Review 11 [1960], pp. 43-61). Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), pp. 14-15, 55-69; Armour (“The Theme of Exodus in the First Two Cantos of the Purgatorio,” in Dante Soundings, ed. David Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981], pp. 59-99); and Pasquini (“Dante and the 'Prefaces of Truth': from 'Figure' to 'Completion,'” Italian Studies 54 [1999], pp. 18-25).
For the pertinence of typical medieval rubrics to the Psalm, which divide it into three parts (the miracle of the Exodus, the Hebrews' backsliding worship of the Golden Calf, reaffirmation of God's continuing support), a division that is seen as paralleling the three scenes of the canto (completion of the 'exodus' of the arriving souls, Casella's song as 'idolatrous,' Cato's insistence on the pilgrims' devotion to God) see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 36). Each of these moments is assigned, as it were, a single simile that reflects its central action, the arrival of the ship (vv. 13-18), Dante's unique status as still living in the flesh (vv. 70-74), Cato's rebuke (vv. 124-132).
Since the words of the incipit of this Psalm offer the basis for the analysis of the Commedia as conforming to the analytical practice of allegory as practised by theologians to interpret the Bible offered in the Epistle to Cangrande, it is not surprising that those who believe that Dante is in fact the author of this document make much of its precepts in discussing this tercet. It should be kept in mind that the citation of the Psalm here, ca. 1310, predates the composition of the epistle (ca. 1317-21). Thus the epistle, if it is authentic (as this writer believes: see Hollander, Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993] with bibliography of the debate to that date), does not describe proleptically the procedures of the poem, but reflects them. The two most recent editors of the epistle, Thomas Ricklin (Das Schreiben an Cangrande della Scala [Hamburg: Meiner, 1993]) and Enzo Cecchini (Epistola a Cangrande [Florence: Giunti, 1995]), both argue strongly for its authenticity. For two attempts to counter the growing consensus that the epistle is, after all, Dante's own, see Brugnoli (“Ancora sull'Epistola a Cangrande,” Critica del testo 1 [1998], pp. 985-1008) and Inglese (“Epistola a Cangrande: questione aperta,” Critica del testo 2 [1999], pp. 951-74).
For this moment in which, according to a recent discussant, Dante decisively confronts and rejects the 'hard' poetics of his rime petrose for the 'liquid' poetry of salvation see Gianni Vinciguerra (“Petra / Aqua: della funzionalità di alcuni salmi nella Commedia,” Critica del testo 3 [1999], esp. pp. 896-909). For the program of.Psalms and hymns utilized by Dante in the Purgatorio see Antonio Mastrobuono (Essays on Dante's Philosophy of History [Florence: Olschki, 1979], pp. 181-89); Louis La Favia (“' ...ché quivi per canti,' [Purg. XII, 113]: Dante's Programmatic Use of Psalms and Hymns in the Purgatory,” Studies in Iconography 9 [1984-86], pp. 53-65); and Erminia Ardissono (“I Canti liturgici nel Purgatorio dantesco,” Dante Studies 108 [1990], pp. 39-65).
Like the heavenly messenger at the walls of Dis (Inf. IX.100-103), this angel, after blessing his flock, also moves away from those he has helped as quickly as possible, but on this occasion not from disgust at the place in which he finds himself, but to return to Ostia for more saved souls.
The souls fling themselves upon the shore (si gittar) just as the damned fling themselves (gittansi) upon Charon's boat (Inf. III.116), but with key elements in the scenes significantly reversed, though both groups are spurred by their desire for justice.
The second scene of the canto begins with the mutual pleasure and confusion of the two groups that play the major roles in it, the crowd of pilgrims and the two travelers, both less (in Virgil's case) and more than saved souls, since Dante is destined to return and will then be a uniquely experienced penitent.
As Bosco/Reggio point out in their commentary to these lines, all the images in them are derived from hunting. The sun (Apollo as archer), now risen above the horizon, shoots its rays (arrows) everywhere, striking the constellation Capricorn, 90o from Aries. Consequently, Capricorn moves several degrees down the sky from its highest point, where it was at dawn.
For the resemblances of the mount of purgatory to Mt. Sinai see Carol Kaske (“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 [1971], pp. 1-18.). For her the mountain is not only its former self, site of the divine gift of Ten Commandments to Moses, but a place of Christian pilgrimage under the New Law.
Virgil's reply to the saved souls identifies himself and Dante as being 'pilgrims,' in the generic sense that they are travelers in a foreign land. In a more limited and Christian sense, only Dante and the new arrivals are truly on a pilgrimage. This is the first of nine uses of the noun or adjective peregrino that are distributed through the final two cantiche. For the view that the controlling idea of the Commedia is that of a pilgrimage see, among others, John Demaray (Dante and the Book of the Cosmos [Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987], pp. 1-60); Bruno Basile (“Dante e l'idea di peregrinatio,” in his Il tempo e le forme: studi letterari da Dante a Gadda [Modena: Mucchi, 1990 (1986)], pp. 9-36); Julia Holloway (The Pilgrim and the Book [New York: Peter Lang, 1992], esp. pp. 57-84); and Picone (“Inferno VIII: il viaggio contrastato,” L'Alighieri 9 [1997], pp. 35-50).
Virgil's recollection of the difficult journey up through hell is made to reflect the poet's own formulation in Inferno I.5 exactly: aspra e forte (dense and harsh), the adjectives there referring to the 'dark wood' of the world in which Dante found himself at the outset.
These are Virgil's last words in the canto. In fact he nearly disappears from the scene once Dante and Casella take over center stage. He will be mentioned as forming part of the group of those who are rapt by Casella's song (verse 115) and as departing in haste with Dante in the canto's final verse (133). In both cases he is behaving less like a guide than like a lost soul. In a sense, this is the protagonist's first solo flight in the Commedia, a moment in which he is potentially in command of the situation. His success is hardly dazzling.
Satan, with his three heads, had seemed a maraviglia to the protagonist in Inferno XXXIV.37. In the last canto it was the miraculous 'resurrection' of the Christlike humble plant (verse 134) that had seemed a 'wonder' to him. Now it is he who causes wonder in the onlookers, since he is present in the flesh.
This second simile of the canto compares Dante's living visage to the olive branch carried by a messenger of peace. In other words, his very presence in this precinct is an additional assurance to the new souls that God's justice and promise of a kingdom of peace as the final haven for a Christian life was truly offered and truly kept. They have arrived, even if the way before them is uncertain and difficult, since they still have to perform their ritual cleansing of even the memory of sin. While the earliest commentators do not cite a Virgilian source for the simile, beginning with Daniello (comm. to vv. 70-71), who was followed by Lombardi (comm. to vv. 70-71), Portirelli (comm. to vv. 65-70), Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 70-72), and Scartazzini (comm. to verse 70), later ones point to two possible Virgilian sources: Aeneid VIII.115-116 and XI.100-101. Andreoli (comm. to verse 70) cites only the first of these. In the second, messengers from the camp of Turnus, holding up olive branches, seek permission of Aeneas to gather the bodies of the dead for burial; in the first it is Aeneas himself, standing upon the puppis (quarterdeck) of his ship, who holds forth the branch of peace to Pallas, son of Evander. Pallas is amazed (obstipuit – verse 121) by Aeneas's cordial gesture and accedes to it. The entire context there seems to fit the details of Dante's scene better, Dante as Aeneas 'invading' the homeland of those with whom he will be allied. As Hollander has pointed out (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 37), the ominous undertones present in Virgil's scene (Aeneas will in fact bring not peace but war, one in which Pallas will become the central sacrificial partner) seem necessarily excluded here.
This final detail, on the other hand, does inject a note of moral tension, since it reveals the predisposition of these souls to linger where they are rather than to proceed upward. See the note to vv. 10-12. Their openness to negligence begins the conflict narrated in this second section of the canto, in which Casella's song will so engage them that they will finally have to be chastised by Cato. See Francesco da Buti's comment to this verse, insisting on 'their negligence, which follows from their delight in worldly things.'
The verse carries an overtone of a line in the passage from Convivio describing the effect of Mars as music, moving the hearers to such a state that they 'quasi cessano da ogni operazione' (almost completely cease their activity). See the note to Purgatorio II.13-18. Dante is, in effect, their 'music,' and they respond more to the miracle of his fleshly presence than to the sign of God's love that it gives, and which should be acknowledged.
This as yet unidentified soul (we will learn his name, Casella, at verse 91) has recognized Dante and advances to embrace him; Dante, filled with a proper Christian affection, responds to his embracer's emotion without any personalization, returning love for love without earthly distinctions. It is a very good beginning for a pilgrim in purgatory.
This much-admired scene is modeled on another, but which one? Virgil's epic (Aen. II.792-794 and VI.700-702) contains three identical lines of verse describing a failed embrace. The first commentators opt for the latter, Aeneas's attempt to hold fast Anchises' paternal ghost. But John of Serravalle, in his commentary to these lines, thinks, in a departure from that opinion, of Aeneas's identical effort to embrace the dead form of his wife, Creusa, in the second book. He was followed by Vellutello (comm. to vv. 79-87). Modern commentators almost universally return to the more familiar scene in Book VI, and it has been rare in the last century of glossing to find anyone even contemplating the earlier scene involving Creusa. One would expect, perhaps, that commentators would at least discuss their options. But such is not the case. For reasons to prefer the less favored text, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 38 [but see his earlier identical view (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975], p. 349)]), pointing out that (1) the poet will later and unmistakably refer to Aeneas's attempted embrace of Anchises (Par. XV.25-27) and arguing that it would be less than likely for him to do so here as well, since he had two such moments to choose from; (2) the context, in which Casella will shortly be singing a song of love to Dante, would argue for the greater appropriateness of Creusa to Anchises. One discussant argues for a double reference here; see George Economou (“Self-Consciousness of Poetic Activity in Dante and Langland,” in Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages, ed. Lois Ebin [Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984]), p. 180. (For the supposed program of 'failed' embraces in this cantica see the note to Purg. XXI.130-136.) And now see Wei Wei Yeo (“Embodiment in the Commedia: Dante's Exilic and Poetic Self-Consciousness,” Dante Studies 121 [2003 {2006}]), p. 92 (n. 48), who is in agreement with Economou, but is apparently unaware of her Renaissance precursors, not to mention her more contemporary one.
For the apostrophe of the 'empty shades, except in seeming' see, as Tommaseo suggested in 1837, Inferno VI.36, the phrase 'lor vanità che par persona' (their emptiness, which seems real bodies). The shades of the gluttons there and of all posthumous souls have this in common, but we must wait for Statius's long disquisition in canto XXV to learn how the 'aerial body' of the dead is produced.
Casella's smile is the first one we have seen since Limbo, when Virgil smiled to see the poets of antiquity welcome Dante as they prepared to include him in their noble company (Inf. IV.99). Smiles, understandably absent from the visages of those in hell, will be more frequent in purgatory, some dozen of them, and still more so in paradise (two dozen).
Only after Dante hears Casella's voice does he recognize him, so distant seems the world of earth. See the entirely similar moment with Forese Donati (Purg. XXIII.43-45) and one somewhat similar with his sister Piccarda (Par. III.58-63).
Both Dante and Casella are eager to stay and converse; we will soon enough understand that, for all the humanity and pleasantness of their attitudes, Cato has other plans for them.
Casella, finally named, was obviously, from the context of the scene, a musician. That is really all we know with any certainty about him. Nonetheless, it is clear that he is someone whom Dante actually knew. Whether he was from Florence or Pistoia (or even Siena – the commentators are puzzled and offer these possibilities, most of them plumping for Florence) we do not know. Whether he actually set one or more of Dante's poems to music we do not know. For some sense of his possible identity and activity see Luigi Peirone, 'Casella' (ED.1970.1); Fabio Bisogni (“Precisazioni sul Casella dantesco,” Quadrivium 12 [1971(1974)], pp. 81-91) and Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh (“I musicisti di Dante [Casella, Lippo, Schochetto] in Nicolò de' Rossi,” Studi Danteschi 48 [1971], esp. pp. 156-58).
It comes as something of a surprise to realize that Dante has not spoken since Inferno XXXIV.100-105. His silence in the first canto of the new cantica is probably meant to suggest the awe he feels in this new, mysterious, and sacred place. Casella, representing the familiarity of Tuscany, allows him to break the spell.
Casella has evidently been dead some time (for at least slightly more than three months, as verse 98 will make plain) and Dante wonders why he has been so long between death and his first step toward salvation, arrival in purgatory. Beginning with Poletto (comm. to vv. 94-99) and Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 (1896)], p. 168, commentators have seen a connection here with Charon's unwillingness to take certain of the waiting shades across Acheron (they all are eager to be taken) and in fact picking and choosing among the waiting throng (Aen. VI.315-316). We might continue the thought: In Dante's poem Charon takes all bound for hell at once; only those bound for purgatory need to be winnowed by the transporting angel, with some having to stay longer in the world, near Ostia, thus mirroring a sort of prepurgation that the poet has invented, offstage, as it were.
Casella's startling narrative at times escapes the sort of attention it requires. This is what we learn: Before the Jubilee Year's plenary indulgence announced by Pope Boniface in February 1300 (retroactive to Christmas of 1299), all those who came to the region around Ostia, where the souls of the saved are gathered, had to await the pleasure of the angel to be taken aboard the ship that we have just seen Casella and the others disembark from. Before 25 December 1299, Casella was denied many times a seat in the ship. We are forced to understand that he was not gifted with a particularly energetic desire for God; i.e., he was a perfect 'brother' to the Dante we meet at the beginning of this canto, a man like those 'who think about the way and in their hearts go on – while still their bodies linger' (Purg. II.11-12). Purgatory is thus divided into three spaces: the mountain of purgation itself, ante-purgatory, and 'pre-ante-purgatory,' located somewhere never described but at or near Ostia. And the laws of this place themselves underwent a change in late 1299, for after that date anyone who wanted to depart for the 'holy land' would be accommodated by the angel. (Dante has apparently, on no authority but his own, decided that the plenary indulgence for sinners extended to the souls of the justified dead as well.) This requires that we understand that during the past three months Casella did not want to travel south toward heaven. Given his behavior once he arrives at the shore, however, this is not totally surprising. Finally, precisely three months after the merciful decree was made, he decided that he wanted to leave. The date: 25 March 1300, the Florentine New Year. Is it coincidence that this, the most likely date for the beginning of Dante's journey (see the notes to Inf. I.1; Inf. I.11; Purg. I.19-21), is also that on which Casella probably set out? Whether or not it is, we have the delightful spectacle of these two miraculous voyagers, each starting somewhere in Italy, one gliding over the seas, the other moving under the earth, arriving at the antipodes within minutes of one another, reunited in friendship and peace. (Poletto's discussion [comm. to vv. 94-99] of some of these problems is one of the few in which these complex matters are closely and suggestively examined.)
The protagonist's language is laced with diametrically opposed terms: 'new law' and 'songs of love.' Merely hearing them, one intuits that there is an oppositional relationship between them. Daniello's commentary (1568) asserts that there is indeed a 'new law' in purgatory, where 'one does not sing vain and lascivious things, but hymns and psalms in praise of God, and prays to Him.' In this first confrontation, looking ahead to the song not yet sung, the 113th Psalm is that of the 'New Law,' and is juxtaposed against the love song that Dante wrote for a woman in the last century. It is this kind that, earthbound as he now again is, the protagonist longs for.
Petrocchi's text for verse 108 reads 'doglie' (sorrows) and not 'voglie' (longings). Hardly any Dantist currently admires this choice, and the vast majority urges a return to the 1921 reading, including the translators. For one of the stronger arguments for such a return see Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 (1982]), pp. 67-70; see also Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 83-88. And see the similar locution (Purg. III.41): 'lor disio quetato,' where the verb quetare is joined to a word for desire or longing. Once again, we have followed Petrocchi, despite our disagreement. But see Sanguineti's edition (Dantis Alagherii Comedia [Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001]) which prints voglie.
Dante's soul, wearied by his bodily weight, remembers his condition at the beginning of Inferno I.22: in simile, his mind, in stress, is like the breath of a man escaping from death by drowning, affannata (laboring). If he seems better off now than he was then, he is still in considerable difficulty.
Casella's song is Dante's song, the second canzone found in Convivio. It was composed in celebration of Lady Philosophy. That sounds innocent or even positive. On the other hand, she is, early on in Convivio, specifically designated as having replaced Beatrice in Dante's affections. Within the confines of Convivio this is not problematic. In the Commedia, in which Beatrice is the moving force for so much, it is. And thus some critics have embraced what seems at first an unlikely position: that Dante is here denigrating his affection for that lady. For this argument see Ann Hallock (“Dante's selva oscura and Other Obscure selvas,” Forum Italicum 6 [1972]), pp. 72-74, and Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975]), pp. 353-55. For a restatement of the more traditional view see Ignazio Baldelli (“Linguistica e interpretazione: l'amore di Catone, di Casella, di Carlo Martello e le canzoni del «Convivio» II e III,” in Miscellanea di studi linguistici in onore di Walter Belardi, ed. P. Cipriano, P. Di Giovine, M. Mancini, vol. II [Rome: n. p., 1996], esp. p. 549). As long ago as 1955 Fausto Montanari (“Il canto secondo del Purgatorio,” Humanitas 10 [1955], pp. 359-63) interpreted the scene as being essentially oppositional, a position that was redeveloped in the 1970s by Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986], pp. 186-94) and Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975], pp. 348-63) and followed by several others, including Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 [1982], pp. 58-62; Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), pp. 31-40; and Edoardo Sanguineti (“Infernal Acoustics: Sacred Song and Earthly Song,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), pp. 74-77. For medieval musical theory as supporting this conception of an oppositional strategy in the structuring of the canto's two songs Amilcare see Iannucci (“Casella's Song and the Tuning of the Soul,” Thought 65 [1990]), pp. 42-44. But for general opposition to such ways of reading the episode see Baldelli (“Linguistica e interpretazione: l'amore di Catone, di Casella, di Carlo Martello e le canzoni del «Convivio» II e III,” in Miscellanea di studi linguistici in onore di Walter Belardi, ed. P. Cipriano, P. Di Giovine, M. Mancini, vol. II [Rome: n. p., 1996], pp. 535-55), and Muresu (“L'inno e il canto d'amore,” La Rassegna della letteratura italiana 104 [2000], pp. 5-48). For a rejoinder to Hollander see Pertile (“Dante, lo scoglio e la vesta,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995]), p. 91.
Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 39), noted that Cato's rejecting attitude toward Marcia is to be contrasted with Dante's apparent affection for the lady of the canzone.
For discussions of the possibility that Casella actually set this canzone of Dante see Mario Marti (“Dolcezza di memorie ed assoluto etico nel canto di Casella [Purg. II],” in his Studi su Dante [Galatina: Congedo, 1984 (1962)]), pp. 81-88, and Fabio Bisogni (“Precisazioni sul Casella dantesco,” Quadrivium 12 [1971 (1974)]), pp. 81-91.
The sweetness of the song is memorable even now, says the poet. One can see why most readers of this scene take these words as confirming the poet's approval of a positive feeling. But see Inferno XXVI.19-24, where the poet 'grieves again' as he 'grieved then' for the lost Ulysses. Both Ulysses and his own Convivial ode are marked as temptations the strength of which are both still vividly felt by him, even though he now knows better than to accede to them.
In this context James Chiampi (“Augustinian Distentio and the Structure of Dante's Purgatory,” Canadian Journal of Italian Studies 18 [1995], pp. 1-21) discusses the pertinence for Dante of Augustine's discussion of distentio, distraction that leads away from truth.
Cato's return was not in program, as is clear from verse 106 in the previous canto. He evidently believed that this specially privileged Christian visitor to purgatory would know how to behave better than he does. But now he has not only backslid himself, but is involving the whole new contingent of the saved into behaving similarly. Cato sounds exactly like St. Paul, urging them all to 'put off the old man and put on the new' (Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9). For the closeness of Dante's thought here to Colossians 2 and 3, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 40-41): 'And Cato's identity here is not only Pauline, for the scene is clearly reminiscent of Moses's discovery of the falsely worshipping Hebrews before that golden calf (Exodus 32:18-19 – see Carol Kaske [“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 (1971), pp. 1-18] which the text of Psalm 113 had already set before the minds of all who listened to what their own lips were singing only moments before. Echoing God's command and Moses's compliance ('neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount' – Exodus 34:3), Cato sends the music-lovers flying.' For the Pauline references see also Paola Rigo (Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994]), pp. 93-94.
The deeper significance of the word scoglio (slough) is the subject of Lino Pertile's careful analysis (“Dante, lo scoglio e la vesta,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995]) of the patristic sources for the concept of the rind, the remains, as in the shed hide or skin of a dead creature, which show that the central motif, deriving from Genesis 3:21, Colossians 3:9-10, and texts found in Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Augustine, involves the animal skins put on by Adam and Eve to hide their guilty nakedness after the Fall (thus garbing the 'old man' in dead garments, symbolic of his own mortality) and the injunction of Paul to put off the old tunic of fleshliness in order to put on the new life of faith in Christ. This writer is in accord with Pertile's general interpretation of this image, but continues to believe that the context of the passage, which sets the Convivial ode against the 113th Psalm, urges us to understand that Dante's earlier ode, by sliding back away from veneration of Beatrice, is a record of his previous sinful intellectual and affective activity. For arguments parallel to Pertile's, denying that Cato's rebuke of Dante involves the ode, see Scott (“Dante and Philosophy,” Annali d'italianistica 8 [1990], pp. 258-77). For both these writers Cato's rebuke is only general, referring to the necessarily sinful condition of these saved souls before they undergo their purgation. Those who believe the central resonance of the two songs in Dante himself necessarily involves a recantation of some of his earlier views naturally find this scene filled with reminiscence of his earlier divagations from Beatrice and the true way to God. This is one aspect of a major dispute among Dantists at this time and involves the central question of the intellectual biography of the poet. For another dimension of the dispute, see the discussion of the 'sweet new style' in the note to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63.
Those who argue that Cato is being overzealous should pay closer attention to this strong charge he makes against the negligent spirits. Whatever the 'slough' (scoglio) signifies, their adherence to it prevents their seeing God. In the world of the Commedia that can never be a slight problem.
This third and final simile of the canto likens the new pilgrims to doves (for the three programmatic references to these birds in the Commedia, here and in Inf. V.82 and Par. XXV.19, see Shoaf [“Dante's colombi and the Figuralism of Hope in the Divine Comedy,” Dante Studies 93 (1975), pp. 27-59]). And see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 41): 'Their saved souls hunger on high, but their appetitive natures are not yet wrung dry of earthly longing. Thus they are careless in their ingestion (see Matthew 13:36-43) for the parable of the wheat and the tares alluded to in their failure to make a decision between 'biado o loglio'). If music be the food of love, there is also a heavenly music. We and the pilgrims know that this is true. They have sung it themselves in this very place.'
The final verse, in its understated brevity, conveys a feeling for the two travelers' guilty acceptance of Cato's command and their hasty departure in shame.
'The second canto of the Purgatorio dramatizes the need for interpretation by presenting two songs to its audience, the arriving pilgrims. It is clear that we comprise a still more crucial audience. Most of us have chosen to follow the lead of the one whom we take to be our leader, Dante himself. (His several intellectually or morally flawed responses as he moved through Inferno have not, apparently, been cogent enough sign of his frequent inadequacy as guide to our reactions.) He, lost in the beauty of his own old song, either fails to understand or else forgets the message of the new song which he has heard first, and which should have served as a rein on his enthusiasm. It is as old as Exodus and as new as the dawn which brings it, this Easter Sunday morning on the shore of the mountain. Even its angelic sanction has not prevented most of us from leaving the theater humming the other song, that lovely little Italian air, “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona.” One can only imagine Dante's reaction as he hears us go out, back into the night' (Hollander, “Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 41).
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
Please enter a search term.
Già era 'l sole a l'orizzonte giunto
lo cui meridïan cerchio coverchia
Ierusalèm col suo più alto punto;
e la notte, che opposita a lui cerchia,
uscia di Gange fuor con le Bilance,
che le caggion di man quando soverchia;
sì che le bianche e le vermiglie guance,
là dov' i' era, de la bella Aurora
per troppa etate divenivan rance.
Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora,
come gente che pensa a suo cammino,
che va col cuore e col corpo dimora.
Ed ecco, qual, sorpreso dal mattino,
per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia
giù nel ponente sovra 'l suol marino,
cotal m'apparve, s'io ancor lo veggia,
un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto,
che 'l muover suo nessun volar pareggia.
Dal qual com' io un poco ebbi ritratto
l'occhio per domandar lo duca mio,
rividil più lucente e maggior fatto.
Poi d'ogne lato ad esso m'appario
un non sapeva che bianco, e di sotto
a poco a poco un altro a lui uscìo.
Lo mio maestro ancor non facea motto,
mentre che i primi bianchi apparver ali;
allor che ben conobbe il galeotto,
gridò: “Fa, fa che le ginocchia cali.
Ecco l'angel di Dio: piega le mani;
omai vedrai di sì fatti officiali.
Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani,
sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo
che l'ali sue, tra liti sì lontani.
Vedi come l'ha dritte verso 'l cielo,
trattando l'aere con l'etterne penne,
che non si mutan come mortal pelo.”
Poi, come più e più verso noi venne
l'uccel divino, più chiaro appariva;
per che l'occhio da presso nol sostenne,
ma chinail giuso; e quei sen venne a riva
con un vasello snelletto e leggero,
tanto che l'acqua nulla ne 'nghiottiva.
Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero,
tal che faria beato pur descripto;
e più di cento spirti entro sediero.
“In exitu Isräel de Aegypto”
cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce
con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto.
Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce;
ond' ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia:
ed el sen gì, come venne, veloce.
La turba che rimase lì, selvaggia
parea del loco, rimirando intorno
come colui che nove cose assaggia.
Da tutte parti saettava il giorno
lo sol, ch'avea con le saette conte
di mezzo 'l ciel cacciato Capricorno,
quando la nova gente alzò la fronte
ver' noi, dicendo a noi: “Se voi sapete,
mostratene la via di gire al monte.”
E Virgilio rispuose: “Voi credete
forse che siamo esperti d'esto loco;
ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete.
Dianzi venimmo, innanzi a voi un poco,
per altra via, che fu sì aspra e forte,
che lo salire omai ne parrà gioco.”
L'anime, che si fuor di me accorte,
per lo spirare, ch'i' era ancor vivo,
maravigliando diventaro smorte.
E come a messagger che porta ulivo
tragge la gente per udir novelle,
e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo,
così al viso mio s'affisar quelle
anime fortunate tutte quante,
quasi oblïando d'ire a farsi belle.
Io vidi una di lor trarresi avante
per abbracciarmi, con sì grande affetto,
che mosse me a far lo somigliante.
Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l'aspetto!
tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,
e tante mi tornai con esse al petto.
Di maraviglia, credo, mi dipinsi;
per che l'ombra sorrise e si ritrasse,
e io, seguendo lei, oltre mi pinsi.
Soavemente disse ch'io posasse;
allor conobbi chi era, e pregai
che, per parlarmi, un poco s'arrestasse.
Rispuosemi: “Così com' io t'amai
nel mortal corpo, così t'amo sciolta:
però m'arresto; ma tu perché vai?”
“Casella mio, per tornar altra volta
là dov' io son, fo io questo vïaggio,”
diss' io; “ma a te com' è tanta ora tolta?”
Ed elli a me: “Nessun m'è fatto oltraggio,
se quei che leva quando e cui li piace,
più volte m'ha negato esto passaggio;
ché di giusto voler lo suo si face:
veramente da tre mesi elli ha tolto
chi ha voluto intrar, con tutta pace.
Ond' io, ch'era ora a la marina vòlto
dove l'acqua di Tevero s'insala,
benignamente fu' da lui ricolto.
A quella foce ha elli or dritta l'ala,
però che sempre quivi si ricoglie
qual verso Acheronte non si cala.”
E io: “Se nuova legge non ti toglie
memoria o uso a l'amoroso canto
che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie,
di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto
l'anima mia, che, con la sua persona
venendo qui, è affannata tanto!”
“Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona”
cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente,
che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.
Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente
ch'eran con lui parevan sì contenti,
come a nessun toccasse altro la mente.
Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti
a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto
gridando: “Che è ciò, spiriti lenti?
qual negligenza, quale stare è questo?
Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio
ch'esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.”
Come quando, cogliendo biado o loglio,
li colombi adunati a la pastura,
queti, sanza mostrar l'usato orgoglio,
se cosa appare ond' elli abbian paura,
subitamente lasciano star l'esca,
perch' assaliti son da maggior cura;
così vid' io quella masnada fresca
lasciar lo canto, e fuggir ver' la costa,
com' om che va, né sa dove rïesca;
né la nostra partita fu men tosta.
Already had the sun the horizon reached
Whose circle of meridian covers o'er
Jerusalem with its most lofty point,
And night that opposite to him revolves
Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales
That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth;
So that the white and the vermilion cheeks
Of beautiful Aurora, where I was,
By too great age were changing into orange.
We still were on the border of the sea,
Like people who are thinking of their road,
Who go in heart and with the body stay;
And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning,
Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red
Down in the West upon the ocean floor,
Appeared to me—may I again behold it!—
A light along the sea so swiftly coming,
Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled;
From which when I a little had withdrawn
Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor,
Again I saw it brighter grown and larger.
Then on each side of it appeared to me
I knew not what of white, and underneath it
Little by little there came forth another.
My Master yet had uttered not a word
While the first whiteness into wings unfolded;
But when he clearly recognised the pilot,
He cried: "Make haste, make haste to bow the knee!
Behold the Angel of God! fold thou thy hands!
Henceforward shalt thou see such officers!
See how he scorneth human arguments,
So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail
Than his own wings, between so distant shores.
See how he holds them pointed up to heaven,
Fanning the air with the eternal pinions,
That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!"
Then as still nearer and more near us came
The Bird Divine, more radiant he appeared,
So that near by the eye could not endure him,
But down I cast it; and he came to shore
With a small vessel, very swift and light,
So that the water swallowed naught thereof.
Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot;
Beatitude seemed written in his face,
And more than a hundred spirits sat within.
"In exitu Israel de Aegypto!"
They chanted all together in one voice,
With whatso in that psalm is after written.
Then made he sign of holy rood upon them,
Whereat all cast themselves upon the shore,
And he departed swiftly as he came.
The throng which still remained there unfamiliar
Seemed with the place, all round about them gazing,
As one who in new matters makes essay.
On every side was darting forth the day.
The sun, who had with his resplendent shafts
From the mid-heaven chased forth the Capricorn,
When the new people lifted up their faces
Towards us, saying to us: "If ye know,
Show us the way to go unto the mountain."
And answer made Virgilius: "Ye believe
Perchance that we have knowledge of this place,
But we are strangers even as yourselves.
Just now we came, a little while before you,
Another way, which was so rough and steep,
That mounting will henceforth seem sport to us."
The souls who had, from seeing me draw breath,
Become aware that I was still alive,
Pallid in their astonishment became;
And as to messenger who bears the olive
The people throng to listen to the news,
And no one shows himself afraid of crowding,
So at the sight of me stood motionless
Those fortunate spirits, all of them, as if
Oblivious to go and make them fair.
One from among them saw I coming forward,
As to embrace me, with such great affection,
That it incited me to do the like.
O empty shadows, save in aspect only!
Three times behind it did I clasp my hands,
As oft returned with them to my own breast!
I think with wonder I depicted me;
Whereat the shadow smiled and backward drew;
And I, pursuing it, pressed farther forward.
Gently it said that I should stay my steps;
Then knew I who it was, and I entreated
That it would stop awhile to speak with me.
It made reply to me: "Even as I loved thee
In mortal body, so I love thee free;
Therefore I stop; but wherefore goest thou?"
"My own Casella! to return once more
There where I am, I make this journey," said I;
"But how from thee has so much time be taken?"
And he to me: "No outrage has been done me,
If he who takes both when and whom he pleases
Has many times denied to me this passage,
For of a righteous will his own is made.
He, sooth to say, for three months past has taken
Whoever wished to enter with all peace;
Whence I, who now had turned unto that shore
Where salt the waters of the Tiber grow,
Benignantly by him have been received.
Unto that outlet now his wing is pointed,
Because for evermore assemble there
Those who tow'rds Acheron do not descend."
And I: "If some new law take not from thee
Memory or practice of the song of love,
Which used to quiet in me all my longings,
Thee may it please to comfort therewithal
Somewhat this soul of mine, that with its body
Hitherward coming is so much distressed."
"Love, that within my mind discourses with me,"
Forthwith began he so melodiously,
The melody within me still is sounding.
My Master, and myself, and all that people
Which with him were, appeared as satisfied
As if naught else might touch the mind of any.
We all of us were moveless and attentive
Unto his notes; and lo! the grave old man,
Exclaiming: "What is this, ye laggard spirits?
What negligence, what standing still is this?
Run to the mountain to strip off the slough,
That lets not God be manifest to you."
Even as when, collecting grain or tares,
The doves, together at their pasture met,
Quiet, nor showing their accustomed pride,
If aught appear of which they are afraid,
Upon a sudden leave their food alone,
Because they are assailed by greater care;
So that fresh company did I behold
The song relinquish, and go tow'rds the hill,
As one who goes, and knows not whitherward;
Nor was our own departure less in haste.
This elaborate way of telling time by the position of the sun and other stars in the heavens, inopportune in hell, where the sight of the sky is denied the travelers, will be a frequent feature of Purgatorio. The four main points of reference are here (and on other occasions), Jerusalem, site of the Crucifixion and thus the most significant point on earth; the Ganges, 90o to the east; the antipodes, 180o to the south; and Cádiz, in Spain, 270o around the circle of the meridian, a great circle arc over Jerusalem. This makes a right angle in its intersection with the plane made by the equator, which extends into a similar great-circle arc known as the horizon. Each of the four equidistant points covered by the meridian is six hours from the other. Thus we are told that it was 6pm in Jerusalem, midnight over India, and dawn here at the antipodes. The location of noon is left unexpressed, but we can understand that it is in fact over Cadiz, and may choose to understand that the omission forces us to supply this last indication and perhaps to consider that this is the place associated with Ulysses' departure on his 'mad flight' (Inf. XXVI.106-111), especially since the concluding verses of the last canto had so clearly reminded the reader of Ulysses' voyage (see the note to Purg. I.130-132 and Hollander, “Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 32-33).
The phrase at vv. 4-6 is complicated, but eventually comprehensible. In the northern hemisphere, when the nights grow longer than the day after the autumn solstice, the sun appears in Libra, as a result no longer a nighttime constellation, and thus the Scales 'fall from her [night's] hand.' However, in the northern hemisphere it is now just after the spring solstice and the night is found in Libra, while the sun is in Aries.
The mood of the travelers, compared by many, perhaps beginning with Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to this passage), to pilgrims on their way to earn indulgence for their sins, is not particularly eager. Rather, they seem to hesitate. Vittorio Russo (“Il canto II del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. III [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 243, cites Hebrews 11:13-16, with its insistence on the nature of life as a pilgrimage, as relevant to this tercet. That passage is contained in one of the most significant texts in the New Testament giving credence to the idea that those who were born before Christ were nonetheless responsible for and capable of believing in Christ to come (all of Heb. 11 insists on the faith found in the great figures of the Old Testament). But our pilgrims seem more at home with 'Egypt' than they are eager for the New Jerusalem, as were the Hebrews themselves in the desert (see Exodus 14:11-12; 16:2-3; 17:3) because they lacked a full measure of zeal for their journey. For a discussion of the hesitance that suffuses this canto see Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 [1982], pp. 53-70). As Poletto (comm. to this passage) was perhaps the first to note, the phrasing here reflects that of Vita nuova XIII.6, where, in a simile, Dante is unsure about the path he should pursue.
This is, perhaps surprisingly, the first simile of Purgatorio (there was a brief comparison at Purg. I.119-120; another at verse 11, just above). While the first canto (vv. 19-21) involved a special relationship to Venus, this canto turns instead to Mars, treated here, as was Venus there, as morning star. In his Convivio, where Dante associates the first seven heavens with the liberal arts, he says (II.xiii.20-24) that Mars may be compared to Music. He concludes (24): 'Moreover, Music attracts to itself the human spirits, which are, as it were, principally vapors of the heart, so that they almost completely cease their activity; this happens likewise to the entire soul when it hears music, and the virtue of all of them, as it were, runs to the spirit of sense, which receives the sound' (tr. Lansing). We shall see that these notions will come into play when Casella sings Dante's ode to the new pilgrims at the mountain's shore later in the canto. In his remarks on these verses, Bernardino Daniello was perhaps the first commentator to bring that passage in Convivio to bear on this text. But the valence of the passage as it is reflected here puts the alluring red light of Mars (and, later, listening to music, which is what Mars signifies in the earlier text) into a negative correspondence with the alacrity and whiteness of the swiftly approaching angel. Looking west toward Mars implies turning one's back on the sunrise to the east. Porena's commentary (to vv. 13-15) observes that Dante, as a Tuscan, was acquainted with this view of the sea, one found on the western – and not the eastern – shore of the Italian peninsula.
The opening verse of the simile has caused considerable difficulty because the early texts offered probably unacceptable readings and later attempts have been divided into two solutions, roughly as follows: either 'sul presso del mattino' (at the nearing of dawn) or 'sorpreso dal mattino' (covered over by the dawn). This last is Petrocchi's solution, and we have followed it, if at a distance, in our translation. Gabriele Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 79-81, supports Petrocchi's reading.
The gradual revelation of the approaching presence (more light, greater size, two elements of white that then resolve to three [two wings and the angel's 'body']) culminates in Virgil's recognition of the angelic nature of the steersman. For a brief account of the nature of and doctrinal problems inherent in Dante's angelology see Alison Cornish (“Angels,” The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing [New York: Garland, 2000], pp. 37-45).
The term galeotto (helmsman, steersman) has been used for Phlegyas, who carried Dante and Virgil across Styx in his skiff (Inf. VIII.17 – galeoto). It had previously been used by Francesca (Inf. V.137), as a proper noun, to cast blame upon the character Gallehault in the Arthurian romance that led, according to her, to her undoing. The present galeotto is surely to be understood as a better-intentioned guide. Dante has been cleansed by Virgil to be in the purified condition fitting for his presence before exactly such a being, 'il primo ministro... di paradiso' (Purg. I.98-99). Hell had its guardian demons; purgatory has guardian angels.
Virgil's two balanced exclamations insist on the supernatural abilities of the angel. The first has the effect of reminding us of Ulysses. Where Ulysses made wings of oars (Inf. XXVI.135), this traveler over the same seas before the mount of purgatory requires neither oar nor sail. The word for 'oar' was last heard in Ulysses' speech (as was the phrase 'suol marino' [ocean floor] of verse 15 at Inf. XXVI.129). The word for poop deck, poppa, introduced to the poem to describe Ulysses' position as captain of his ship (Inf. XXVI.124, repeated at XXVI.140) now recurs to set this celestial steersman against his less worthy counterpart (Purg. II.43). For this argument see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 34-35).
The second tercet, describing the heaven-directed wings of the angel, may remind us of Satan's (Inf. XXXIV.46-52) huge wings, if only by antithesis.
Lombardi, discussing this verse, pointed out that the 'uccel divino' (heavenly bird) stands in opposition to the demon Farfarello, a 'malvagio uccello' (filthy bird – Inf. XXII.96).
This is the first time in the poem that Dante is 'blinded by the light.' Such scenes will recur for the rest of the two final cantiche.
This detail almost necessarily reminds us of the contrary depiction of Charon's skiff in (Aen. VI.413-414), sinking into the water of the swamp beneath Aeneas's weight, as Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-42) was perhaps the first to note explicitly. See also Inferno VIII.25-27, when Dante's weight makes Phlegyas's skiff sink in the muddy water of the Styx. And see the note to Inferno III.136.
A much-debated text. The vast majority of codices and of commentators prefers the variant not chosen by Petrocchi: 'tal che parea beato per iscripto' (in such manner as to seem blessed by inscription). Petrocchi chooses the variant 'tal che faria beato pur descripto' (in such a way as to render blessed anyone who reads or hears him described). While we strongly side with the majority view, we have followed Petrocchi here as always. Were we to depart from him, our translation would run as follows: 'whose look made him seem inscribed in blessedness.' See this writer's earlier opinion (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 42): 'My own view is that the verse should be read in the spirit of Landino's gloss, which holds that he seemed 'inscribed, that is, confirmed in bliss,' in the sense (also tentatively lent support by Portirelli [comm. to vv. 44-45]) that he is written in the Book of Life' (see Apoc. 20:12 and discussion in Hollander [“Dante's 'Book of the Dead': A Note on Inferno XXIX, 57,” Studi Danteschi 54 (1982), pp. 31-51]. For the only other use in the Commedia of the past participle of scrivere as a verbal noun see Inferno XIX.54 – and see the similar usage in Convivio I.viii.5. In both these instances the verbal noun refers to a written document, as I believe it does here.' Portirelli (1804) says that the angel 'seemed blessed by eternal and irrevocable decree.' Most of the others – the vast majority of commentators – who read the line as 'parea beato per iscripto' interpret it to mean that the angel looks as though he were written on. Landino, Portirelli, and Hollander believe that he seems blessed because he is inscribed elsewhere, an at least potentially more convincing reading. Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 81-83, reopens the question of the reading of this line, but does not come to a firm conclusion about a preferable variant.
Dante's 'more than a hundred' is a poet's allowable indefinite number, but one based on a very good number indeed, one hundred, number of God (1 0 0 = 1) and of the number of cantos in this poem.
The arriving pilgrims, seated in the ship that carries them to purgation and eventual salvation, sing the Psalm of the Exodus, 114-115 in the modern Bible, 113 in the Vulgate. The text states clearly that they sing all of it in their shared exhilaration. For the informing pattern of the Exodus in this canto (and in the poem as a whole) see, among others, Singleton (“'In exitu Israel de Aegypto,'” Annual Report of the Dante Society 78 [1960], pp. 1-24); Tucker (“'In exitu Isräel de Aegypto': the Divine Comedy in the Light of the Easter Liturgy,” The American Benedictine Review 11 [1960], pp. 43-61). Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), pp. 14-15, 55-69; Armour (“The Theme of Exodus in the First Two Cantos of the Purgatorio,” in Dante Soundings, ed. David Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981], pp. 59-99); and Pasquini (“Dante and the 'Prefaces of Truth': from 'Figure' to 'Completion,'” Italian Studies 54 [1999], pp. 18-25).
For the pertinence of typical medieval rubrics to the Psalm, which divide it into three parts (the miracle of the Exodus, the Hebrews' backsliding worship of the Golden Calf, reaffirmation of God's continuing support), a division that is seen as paralleling the three scenes of the canto (completion of the 'exodus' of the arriving souls, Casella's song as 'idolatrous,' Cato's insistence on the pilgrims' devotion to God) see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 36). Each of these moments is assigned, as it were, a single simile that reflects its central action, the arrival of the ship (vv. 13-18), Dante's unique status as still living in the flesh (vv. 70-74), Cato's rebuke (vv. 124-132).
Since the words of the incipit of this Psalm offer the basis for the analysis of the Commedia as conforming to the analytical practice of allegory as practised by theologians to interpret the Bible offered in the Epistle to Cangrande, it is not surprising that those who believe that Dante is in fact the author of this document make much of its precepts in discussing this tercet. It should be kept in mind that the citation of the Psalm here, ca. 1310, predates the composition of the epistle (ca. 1317-21). Thus the epistle, if it is authentic (as this writer believes: see Hollander, Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993] with bibliography of the debate to that date), does not describe proleptically the procedures of the poem, but reflects them. The two most recent editors of the epistle, Thomas Ricklin (Das Schreiben an Cangrande della Scala [Hamburg: Meiner, 1993]) and Enzo Cecchini (Epistola a Cangrande [Florence: Giunti, 1995]), both argue strongly for its authenticity. For two attempts to counter the growing consensus that the epistle is, after all, Dante's own, see Brugnoli (“Ancora sull'Epistola a Cangrande,” Critica del testo 1 [1998], pp. 985-1008) and Inglese (“Epistola a Cangrande: questione aperta,” Critica del testo 2 [1999], pp. 951-74).
For this moment in which, according to a recent discussant, Dante decisively confronts and rejects the 'hard' poetics of his rime petrose for the 'liquid' poetry of salvation see Gianni Vinciguerra (“Petra / Aqua: della funzionalità di alcuni salmi nella Commedia,” Critica del testo 3 [1999], esp. pp. 896-909). For the program of.Psalms and hymns utilized by Dante in the Purgatorio see Antonio Mastrobuono (Essays on Dante's Philosophy of History [Florence: Olschki, 1979], pp. 181-89); Louis La Favia (“' ...ché quivi per canti,' [Purg. XII, 113]: Dante's Programmatic Use of Psalms and Hymns in the Purgatory,” Studies in Iconography 9 [1984-86], pp. 53-65); and Erminia Ardissono (“I Canti liturgici nel Purgatorio dantesco,” Dante Studies 108 [1990], pp. 39-65).
Like the heavenly messenger at the walls of Dis (Inf. IX.100-103), this angel, after blessing his flock, also moves away from those he has helped as quickly as possible, but on this occasion not from disgust at the place in which he finds himself, but to return to Ostia for more saved souls.
The souls fling themselves upon the shore (si gittar) just as the damned fling themselves (gittansi) upon Charon's boat (Inf. III.116), but with key elements in the scenes significantly reversed, though both groups are spurred by their desire for justice.
The second scene of the canto begins with the mutual pleasure and confusion of the two groups that play the major roles in it, the crowd of pilgrims and the two travelers, both less (in Virgil's case) and more than saved souls, since Dante is destined to return and will then be a uniquely experienced penitent.
As Bosco/Reggio point out in their commentary to these lines, all the images in them are derived from hunting. The sun (Apollo as archer), now risen above the horizon, shoots its rays (arrows) everywhere, striking the constellation Capricorn, 90o from Aries. Consequently, Capricorn moves several degrees down the sky from its highest point, where it was at dawn.
For the resemblances of the mount of purgatory to Mt. Sinai see Carol Kaske (“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 [1971], pp. 1-18.). For her the mountain is not only its former self, site of the divine gift of Ten Commandments to Moses, but a place of Christian pilgrimage under the New Law.
Virgil's reply to the saved souls identifies himself and Dante as being 'pilgrims,' in the generic sense that they are travelers in a foreign land. In a more limited and Christian sense, only Dante and the new arrivals are truly on a pilgrimage. This is the first of nine uses of the noun or adjective peregrino that are distributed through the final two cantiche. For the view that the controlling idea of the Commedia is that of a pilgrimage see, among others, John Demaray (Dante and the Book of the Cosmos [Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987], pp. 1-60); Bruno Basile (“Dante e l'idea di peregrinatio,” in his Il tempo e le forme: studi letterari da Dante a Gadda [Modena: Mucchi, 1990 (1986)], pp. 9-36); Julia Holloway (The Pilgrim and the Book [New York: Peter Lang, 1992], esp. pp. 57-84); and Picone (“Inferno VIII: il viaggio contrastato,” L'Alighieri 9 [1997], pp. 35-50).
Virgil's recollection of the difficult journey up through hell is made to reflect the poet's own formulation in Inferno I.5 exactly: aspra e forte (dense and harsh), the adjectives there referring to the 'dark wood' of the world in which Dante found himself at the outset.
These are Virgil's last words in the canto. In fact he nearly disappears from the scene once Dante and Casella take over center stage. He will be mentioned as forming part of the group of those who are rapt by Casella's song (verse 115) and as departing in haste with Dante in the canto's final verse (133). In both cases he is behaving less like a guide than like a lost soul. In a sense, this is the protagonist's first solo flight in the Commedia, a moment in which he is potentially in command of the situation. His success is hardly dazzling.
Satan, with his three heads, had seemed a maraviglia to the protagonist in Inferno XXXIV.37. In the last canto it was the miraculous 'resurrection' of the Christlike humble plant (verse 134) that had seemed a 'wonder' to him. Now it is he who causes wonder in the onlookers, since he is present in the flesh.
This second simile of the canto compares Dante's living visage to the olive branch carried by a messenger of peace. In other words, his very presence in this precinct is an additional assurance to the new souls that God's justice and promise of a kingdom of peace as the final haven for a Christian life was truly offered and truly kept. They have arrived, even if the way before them is uncertain and difficult, since they still have to perform their ritual cleansing of even the memory of sin. While the earliest commentators do not cite a Virgilian source for the simile, beginning with Daniello (comm. to vv. 70-71), who was followed by Lombardi (comm. to vv. 70-71), Portirelli (comm. to vv. 65-70), Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 70-72), and Scartazzini (comm. to verse 70), later ones point to two possible Virgilian sources: Aeneid VIII.115-116 and XI.100-101. Andreoli (comm. to verse 70) cites only the first of these. In the second, messengers from the camp of Turnus, holding up olive branches, seek permission of Aeneas to gather the bodies of the dead for burial; in the first it is Aeneas himself, standing upon the puppis (quarterdeck) of his ship, who holds forth the branch of peace to Pallas, son of Evander. Pallas is amazed (obstipuit – verse 121) by Aeneas's cordial gesture and accedes to it. The entire context there seems to fit the details of Dante's scene better, Dante as Aeneas 'invading' the homeland of those with whom he will be allied. As Hollander has pointed out (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 37), the ominous undertones present in Virgil's scene (Aeneas will in fact bring not peace but war, one in which Pallas will become the central sacrificial partner) seem necessarily excluded here.
This final detail, on the other hand, does inject a note of moral tension, since it reveals the predisposition of these souls to linger where they are rather than to proceed upward. See the note to vv. 10-12. Their openness to negligence begins the conflict narrated in this second section of the canto, in which Casella's song will so engage them that they will finally have to be chastised by Cato. See Francesco da Buti's comment to this verse, insisting on 'their negligence, which follows from their delight in worldly things.'
The verse carries an overtone of a line in the passage from Convivio describing the effect of Mars as music, moving the hearers to such a state that they 'quasi cessano da ogni operazione' (almost completely cease their activity). See the note to Purgatorio II.13-18. Dante is, in effect, their 'music,' and they respond more to the miracle of his fleshly presence than to the sign of God's love that it gives, and which should be acknowledged.
This as yet unidentified soul (we will learn his name, Casella, at verse 91) has recognized Dante and advances to embrace him; Dante, filled with a proper Christian affection, responds to his embracer's emotion without any personalization, returning love for love without earthly distinctions. It is a very good beginning for a pilgrim in purgatory.
This much-admired scene is modeled on another, but which one? Virgil's epic (Aen. II.792-794 and VI.700-702) contains three identical lines of verse describing a failed embrace. The first commentators opt for the latter, Aeneas's attempt to hold fast Anchises' paternal ghost. But John of Serravalle, in his commentary to these lines, thinks, in a departure from that opinion, of Aeneas's identical effort to embrace the dead form of his wife, Creusa, in the second book. He was followed by Vellutello (comm. to vv. 79-87). Modern commentators almost universally return to the more familiar scene in Book VI, and it has been rare in the last century of glossing to find anyone even contemplating the earlier scene involving Creusa. One would expect, perhaps, that commentators would at least discuss their options. But such is not the case. For reasons to prefer the less favored text, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 38 [but see his earlier identical view (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975], p. 349)]), pointing out that (1) the poet will later and unmistakably refer to Aeneas's attempted embrace of Anchises (Par. XV.25-27) and arguing that it would be less than likely for him to do so here as well, since he had two such moments to choose from; (2) the context, in which Casella will shortly be singing a song of love to Dante, would argue for the greater appropriateness of Creusa to Anchises. One discussant argues for a double reference here; see George Economou (“Self-Consciousness of Poetic Activity in Dante and Langland,” in Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages, ed. Lois Ebin [Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984]), p. 180. (For the supposed program of 'failed' embraces in this cantica see the note to Purg. XXI.130-136.) And now see Wei Wei Yeo (“Embodiment in the Commedia: Dante's Exilic and Poetic Self-Consciousness,” Dante Studies 121 [2003 {2006}]), p. 92 (n. 48), who is in agreement with Economou, but is apparently unaware of her Renaissance precursors, not to mention her more contemporary one.
For the apostrophe of the 'empty shades, except in seeming' see, as Tommaseo suggested in 1837, Inferno VI.36, the phrase 'lor vanità che par persona' (their emptiness, which seems real bodies). The shades of the gluttons there and of all posthumous souls have this in common, but we must wait for Statius's long disquisition in canto XXV to learn how the 'aerial body' of the dead is produced.
Casella's smile is the first one we have seen since Limbo, when Virgil smiled to see the poets of antiquity welcome Dante as they prepared to include him in their noble company (Inf. IV.99). Smiles, understandably absent from the visages of those in hell, will be more frequent in purgatory, some dozen of them, and still more so in paradise (two dozen).
Only after Dante hears Casella's voice does he recognize him, so distant seems the world of earth. See the entirely similar moment with Forese Donati (Purg. XXIII.43-45) and one somewhat similar with his sister Piccarda (Par. III.58-63).
Both Dante and Casella are eager to stay and converse; we will soon enough understand that, for all the humanity and pleasantness of their attitudes, Cato has other plans for them.
Casella, finally named, was obviously, from the context of the scene, a musician. That is really all we know with any certainty about him. Nonetheless, it is clear that he is someone whom Dante actually knew. Whether he was from Florence or Pistoia (or even Siena – the commentators are puzzled and offer these possibilities, most of them plumping for Florence) we do not know. Whether he actually set one or more of Dante's poems to music we do not know. For some sense of his possible identity and activity see Luigi Peirone, 'Casella' (ED.1970.1); Fabio Bisogni (“Precisazioni sul Casella dantesco,” Quadrivium 12 [1971(1974)], pp. 81-91) and Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh (“I musicisti di Dante [Casella, Lippo, Schochetto] in Nicolò de' Rossi,” Studi Danteschi 48 [1971], esp. pp. 156-58).
It comes as something of a surprise to realize that Dante has not spoken since Inferno XXXIV.100-105. His silence in the first canto of the new cantica is probably meant to suggest the awe he feels in this new, mysterious, and sacred place. Casella, representing the familiarity of Tuscany, allows him to break the spell.
Casella has evidently been dead some time (for at least slightly more than three months, as verse 98 will make plain) and Dante wonders why he has been so long between death and his first step toward salvation, arrival in purgatory. Beginning with Poletto (comm. to vv. 94-99) and Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 (1896)], p. 168, commentators have seen a connection here with Charon's unwillingness to take certain of the waiting shades across Acheron (they all are eager to be taken) and in fact picking and choosing among the waiting throng (Aen. VI.315-316). We might continue the thought: In Dante's poem Charon takes all bound for hell at once; only those bound for purgatory need to be winnowed by the transporting angel, with some having to stay longer in the world, near Ostia, thus mirroring a sort of prepurgation that the poet has invented, offstage, as it were.
Casella's startling narrative at times escapes the sort of attention it requires. This is what we learn: Before the Jubilee Year's plenary indulgence announced by Pope Boniface in February 1300 (retroactive to Christmas of 1299), all those who came to the region around Ostia, where the souls of the saved are gathered, had to await the pleasure of the angel to be taken aboard the ship that we have just seen Casella and the others disembark from. Before 25 December 1299, Casella was denied many times a seat in the ship. We are forced to understand that he was not gifted with a particularly energetic desire for God; i.e., he was a perfect 'brother' to the Dante we meet at the beginning of this canto, a man like those 'who think about the way and in their hearts go on – while still their bodies linger' (Purg. II.11-12). Purgatory is thus divided into three spaces: the mountain of purgation itself, ante-purgatory, and 'pre-ante-purgatory,' located somewhere never described but at or near Ostia. And the laws of this place themselves underwent a change in late 1299, for after that date anyone who wanted to depart for the 'holy land' would be accommodated by the angel. (Dante has apparently, on no authority but his own, decided that the plenary indulgence for sinners extended to the souls of the justified dead as well.) This requires that we understand that during the past three months Casella did not want to travel south toward heaven. Given his behavior once he arrives at the shore, however, this is not totally surprising. Finally, precisely three months after the merciful decree was made, he decided that he wanted to leave. The date: 25 March 1300, the Florentine New Year. Is it coincidence that this, the most likely date for the beginning of Dante's journey (see the notes to Inf. I.1; Inf. I.11; Purg. I.19-21), is also that on which Casella probably set out? Whether or not it is, we have the delightful spectacle of these two miraculous voyagers, each starting somewhere in Italy, one gliding over the seas, the other moving under the earth, arriving at the antipodes within minutes of one another, reunited in friendship and peace. (Poletto's discussion [comm. to vv. 94-99] of some of these problems is one of the few in which these complex matters are closely and suggestively examined.)
The protagonist's language is laced with diametrically opposed terms: 'new law' and 'songs of love.' Merely hearing them, one intuits that there is an oppositional relationship between them. Daniello's commentary (1568) asserts that there is indeed a 'new law' in purgatory, where 'one does not sing vain and lascivious things, but hymns and psalms in praise of God, and prays to Him.' In this first confrontation, looking ahead to the song not yet sung, the 113th Psalm is that of the 'New Law,' and is juxtaposed against the love song that Dante wrote for a woman in the last century. It is this kind that, earthbound as he now again is, the protagonist longs for.
Petrocchi's text for verse 108 reads 'doglie' (sorrows) and not 'voglie' (longings). Hardly any Dantist currently admires this choice, and the vast majority urges a return to the 1921 reading, including the translators. For one of the stronger arguments for such a return see Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 (1982]), pp. 67-70; see also Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 83-88. And see the similar locution (Purg. III.41): 'lor disio quetato,' where the verb quetare is joined to a word for desire or longing. Once again, we have followed Petrocchi, despite our disagreement. But see Sanguineti's edition (Dantis Alagherii Comedia [Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001]) which prints voglie.
Dante's soul, wearied by his bodily weight, remembers his condition at the beginning of Inferno I.22: in simile, his mind, in stress, is like the breath of a man escaping from death by drowning, affannata (laboring). If he seems better off now than he was then, he is still in considerable difficulty.
Casella's song is Dante's song, the second canzone found in Convivio. It was composed in celebration of Lady Philosophy. That sounds innocent or even positive. On the other hand, she is, early on in Convivio, specifically designated as having replaced Beatrice in Dante's affections. Within the confines of Convivio this is not problematic. In the Commedia, in which Beatrice is the moving force for so much, it is. And thus some critics have embraced what seems at first an unlikely position: that Dante is here denigrating his affection for that lady. For this argument see Ann Hallock (“Dante's selva oscura and Other Obscure selvas,” Forum Italicum 6 [1972]), pp. 72-74, and Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975]), pp. 353-55. For a restatement of the more traditional view see Ignazio Baldelli (“Linguistica e interpretazione: l'amore di Catone, di Casella, di Carlo Martello e le canzoni del «Convivio» II e III,” in Miscellanea di studi linguistici in onore di Walter Belardi, ed. P. Cipriano, P. Di Giovine, M. Mancini, vol. II [Rome: n. p., 1996], esp. p. 549). As long ago as 1955 Fausto Montanari (“Il canto secondo del Purgatorio,” Humanitas 10 [1955], pp. 359-63) interpreted the scene as being essentially oppositional, a position that was redeveloped in the 1970s by Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986], pp. 186-94) and Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975], pp. 348-63) and followed by several others, including Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 [1982], pp. 58-62; Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), pp. 31-40; and Edoardo Sanguineti (“Infernal Acoustics: Sacred Song and Earthly Song,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), pp. 74-77. For medieval musical theory as supporting this conception of an oppositional strategy in the structuring of the canto's two songs Amilcare see Iannucci (“Casella's Song and the Tuning of the Soul,” Thought 65 [1990]), pp. 42-44. But for general opposition to such ways of reading the episode see Baldelli (“Linguistica e interpretazione: l'amore di Catone, di Casella, di Carlo Martello e le canzoni del «Convivio» II e III,” in Miscellanea di studi linguistici in onore di Walter Belardi, ed. P. Cipriano, P. Di Giovine, M. Mancini, vol. II [Rome: n. p., 1996], pp. 535-55), and Muresu (“L'inno e il canto d'amore,” La Rassegna della letteratura italiana 104 [2000], pp. 5-48). For a rejoinder to Hollander see Pertile (“Dante, lo scoglio e la vesta,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995]), p. 91.
Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 39), noted that Cato's rejecting attitude toward Marcia is to be contrasted with Dante's apparent affection for the lady of the canzone.
For discussions of the possibility that Casella actually set this canzone of Dante see Mario Marti (“Dolcezza di memorie ed assoluto etico nel canto di Casella [Purg. II],” in his Studi su Dante [Galatina: Congedo, 1984 (1962)]), pp. 81-88, and Fabio Bisogni (“Precisazioni sul Casella dantesco,” Quadrivium 12 [1971 (1974)]), pp. 81-91.
The sweetness of the song is memorable even now, says the poet. One can see why most readers of this scene take these words as confirming the poet's approval of a positive feeling. But see Inferno XXVI.19-24, where the poet 'grieves again' as he 'grieved then' for the lost Ulysses. Both Ulysses and his own Convivial ode are marked as temptations the strength of which are both still vividly felt by him, even though he now knows better than to accede to them.
In this context James Chiampi (“Augustinian Distentio and the Structure of Dante's Purgatory,” Canadian Journal of Italian Studies 18 [1995], pp. 1-21) discusses the pertinence for Dante of Augustine's discussion of distentio, distraction that leads away from truth.
Cato's return was not in program, as is clear from verse 106 in the previous canto. He evidently believed that this specially privileged Christian visitor to purgatory would know how to behave better than he does. But now he has not only backslid himself, but is involving the whole new contingent of the saved into behaving similarly. Cato sounds exactly like St. Paul, urging them all to 'put off the old man and put on the new' (Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9). For the closeness of Dante's thought here to Colossians 2 and 3, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 40-41): 'And Cato's identity here is not only Pauline, for the scene is clearly reminiscent of Moses's discovery of the falsely worshipping Hebrews before that golden calf (Exodus 32:18-19 – see Carol Kaske [“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 (1971), pp. 1-18] which the text of Psalm 113 had already set before the minds of all who listened to what their own lips were singing only moments before. Echoing God's command and Moses's compliance ('neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount' – Exodus 34:3), Cato sends the music-lovers flying.' For the Pauline references see also Paola Rigo (Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994]), pp. 93-94.
The deeper significance of the word scoglio (slough) is the subject of Lino Pertile's careful analysis (“Dante, lo scoglio e la vesta,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995]) of the patristic sources for the concept of the rind, the remains, as in the shed hide or skin of a dead creature, which show that the central motif, deriving from Genesis 3:21, Colossians 3:9-10, and texts found in Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Augustine, involves the animal skins put on by Adam and Eve to hide their guilty nakedness after the Fall (thus garbing the 'old man' in dead garments, symbolic of his own mortality) and the injunction of Paul to put off the old tunic of fleshliness in order to put on the new life of faith in Christ. This writer is in accord with Pertile's general interpretation of this image, but continues to believe that the context of the passage, which sets the Convivial ode against the 113th Psalm, urges us to understand that Dante's earlier ode, by sliding back away from veneration of Beatrice, is a record of his previous sinful intellectual and affective activity. For arguments parallel to Pertile's, denying that Cato's rebuke of Dante involves the ode, see Scott (“Dante and Philosophy,” Annali d'italianistica 8 [1990], pp. 258-77). For both these writers Cato's rebuke is only general, referring to the necessarily sinful condition of these saved souls before they undergo their purgation. Those who believe the central resonance of the two songs in Dante himself necessarily involves a recantation of some of his earlier views naturally find this scene filled with reminiscence of his earlier divagations from Beatrice and the true way to God. This is one aspect of a major dispute among Dantists at this time and involves the central question of the intellectual biography of the poet. For another dimension of the dispute, see the discussion of the 'sweet new style' in the note to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63.
Those who argue that Cato is being overzealous should pay closer attention to this strong charge he makes against the negligent spirits. Whatever the 'slough' (scoglio) signifies, their adherence to it prevents their seeing God. In the world of the Commedia that can never be a slight problem.
This third and final simile of the canto likens the new pilgrims to doves (for the three programmatic references to these birds in the Commedia, here and in Inf. V.82 and Par. XXV.19, see Shoaf [“Dante's colombi and the Figuralism of Hope in the Divine Comedy,” Dante Studies 93 (1975), pp. 27-59]). And see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 41): 'Their saved souls hunger on high, but their appetitive natures are not yet wrung dry of earthly longing. Thus they are careless in their ingestion (see Matthew 13:36-43) for the parable of the wheat and the tares alluded to in their failure to make a decision between 'biado o loglio'). If music be the food of love, there is also a heavenly music. We and the pilgrims know that this is true. They have sung it themselves in this very place.'
The final verse, in its understated brevity, conveys a feeling for the two travelers' guilty acceptance of Cato's command and their hasty departure in shame.
'The second canto of the Purgatorio dramatizes the need for interpretation by presenting two songs to its audience, the arriving pilgrims. It is clear that we comprise a still more crucial audience. Most of us have chosen to follow the lead of the one whom we take to be our leader, Dante himself. (His several intellectually or morally flawed responses as he moved through Inferno have not, apparently, been cogent enough sign of his frequent inadequacy as guide to our reactions.) He, lost in the beauty of his own old song, either fails to understand or else forgets the message of the new song which he has heard first, and which should have served as a rein on his enthusiasm. It is as old as Exodus and as new as the dawn which brings it, this Easter Sunday morning on the shore of the mountain. Even its angelic sanction has not prevented most of us from leaving the theater humming the other song, that lovely little Italian air, “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona.” One can only imagine Dante's reaction as he hears us go out, back into the night' (Hollander, “Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 41).
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
Please enter a search term.
Già era 'l sole a l'orizzonte giunto
lo cui meridïan cerchio coverchia
Ierusalèm col suo più alto punto;
e la notte, che opposita a lui cerchia,
uscia di Gange fuor con le Bilance,
che le caggion di man quando soverchia;
sì che le bianche e le vermiglie guance,
là dov' i' era, de la bella Aurora
per troppa etate divenivan rance.
Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora,
come gente che pensa a suo cammino,
che va col cuore e col corpo dimora.
Ed ecco, qual, sorpreso dal mattino,
per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia
giù nel ponente sovra 'l suol marino,
cotal m'apparve, s'io ancor lo veggia,
un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto,
che 'l muover suo nessun volar pareggia.
Dal qual com' io un poco ebbi ritratto
l'occhio per domandar lo duca mio,
rividil più lucente e maggior fatto.
Poi d'ogne lato ad esso m'appario
un non sapeva che bianco, e di sotto
a poco a poco un altro a lui uscìo.
Lo mio maestro ancor non facea motto,
mentre che i primi bianchi apparver ali;
allor che ben conobbe il galeotto,
gridò: “Fa, fa che le ginocchia cali.
Ecco l'angel di Dio: piega le mani;
omai vedrai di sì fatti officiali.
Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani,
sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo
che l'ali sue, tra liti sì lontani.
Vedi come l'ha dritte verso 'l cielo,
trattando l'aere con l'etterne penne,
che non si mutan come mortal pelo.”
Poi, come più e più verso noi venne
l'uccel divino, più chiaro appariva;
per che l'occhio da presso nol sostenne,
ma chinail giuso; e quei sen venne a riva
con un vasello snelletto e leggero,
tanto che l'acqua nulla ne 'nghiottiva.
Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero,
tal che faria beato pur descripto;
e più di cento spirti entro sediero.
“In exitu Isräel de Aegypto”
cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce
con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto.
Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce;
ond' ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia:
ed el sen gì, come venne, veloce.
La turba che rimase lì, selvaggia
parea del loco, rimirando intorno
come colui che nove cose assaggia.
Da tutte parti saettava il giorno
lo sol, ch'avea con le saette conte
di mezzo 'l ciel cacciato Capricorno,
quando la nova gente alzò la fronte
ver' noi, dicendo a noi: “Se voi sapete,
mostratene la via di gire al monte.”
E Virgilio rispuose: “Voi credete
forse che siamo esperti d'esto loco;
ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete.
Dianzi venimmo, innanzi a voi un poco,
per altra via, che fu sì aspra e forte,
che lo salire omai ne parrà gioco.”
L'anime, che si fuor di me accorte,
per lo spirare, ch'i' era ancor vivo,
maravigliando diventaro smorte.
E come a messagger che porta ulivo
tragge la gente per udir novelle,
e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo,
così al viso mio s'affisar quelle
anime fortunate tutte quante,
quasi oblïando d'ire a farsi belle.
Io vidi una di lor trarresi avante
per abbracciarmi, con sì grande affetto,
che mosse me a far lo somigliante.
Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l'aspetto!
tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,
e tante mi tornai con esse al petto.
Di maraviglia, credo, mi dipinsi;
per che l'ombra sorrise e si ritrasse,
e io, seguendo lei, oltre mi pinsi.
Soavemente disse ch'io posasse;
allor conobbi chi era, e pregai
che, per parlarmi, un poco s'arrestasse.
Rispuosemi: “Così com' io t'amai
nel mortal corpo, così t'amo sciolta:
però m'arresto; ma tu perché vai?”
“Casella mio, per tornar altra volta
là dov' io son, fo io questo vïaggio,”
diss' io; “ma a te com' è tanta ora tolta?”
Ed elli a me: “Nessun m'è fatto oltraggio,
se quei che leva quando e cui li piace,
più volte m'ha negato esto passaggio;
ché di giusto voler lo suo si face:
veramente da tre mesi elli ha tolto
chi ha voluto intrar, con tutta pace.
Ond' io, ch'era ora a la marina vòlto
dove l'acqua di Tevero s'insala,
benignamente fu' da lui ricolto.
A quella foce ha elli or dritta l'ala,
però che sempre quivi si ricoglie
qual verso Acheronte non si cala.”
E io: “Se nuova legge non ti toglie
memoria o uso a l'amoroso canto
che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie,
di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto
l'anima mia, che, con la sua persona
venendo qui, è affannata tanto!”
“Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona”
cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente,
che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.
Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente
ch'eran con lui parevan sì contenti,
come a nessun toccasse altro la mente.
Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti
a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto
gridando: “Che è ciò, spiriti lenti?
qual negligenza, quale stare è questo?
Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio
ch'esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.”
Come quando, cogliendo biado o loglio,
li colombi adunati a la pastura,
queti, sanza mostrar l'usato orgoglio,
se cosa appare ond' elli abbian paura,
subitamente lasciano star l'esca,
perch' assaliti son da maggior cura;
così vid' io quella masnada fresca
lasciar lo canto, e fuggir ver' la costa,
com' om che va, né sa dove rïesca;
né la nostra partita fu men tosta.
Already had the sun the horizon reached
Whose circle of meridian covers o'er
Jerusalem with its most lofty point,
And night that opposite to him revolves
Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales
That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth;
So that the white and the vermilion cheeks
Of beautiful Aurora, where I was,
By too great age were changing into orange.
We still were on the border of the sea,
Like people who are thinking of their road,
Who go in heart and with the body stay;
And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning,
Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red
Down in the West upon the ocean floor,
Appeared to me—may I again behold it!—
A light along the sea so swiftly coming,
Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled;
From which when I a little had withdrawn
Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor,
Again I saw it brighter grown and larger.
Then on each side of it appeared to me
I knew not what of white, and underneath it
Little by little there came forth another.
My Master yet had uttered not a word
While the first whiteness into wings unfolded;
But when he clearly recognised the pilot,
He cried: "Make haste, make haste to bow the knee!
Behold the Angel of God! fold thou thy hands!
Henceforward shalt thou see such officers!
See how he scorneth human arguments,
So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail
Than his own wings, between so distant shores.
See how he holds them pointed up to heaven,
Fanning the air with the eternal pinions,
That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!"
Then as still nearer and more near us came
The Bird Divine, more radiant he appeared,
So that near by the eye could not endure him,
But down I cast it; and he came to shore
With a small vessel, very swift and light,
So that the water swallowed naught thereof.
Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot;
Beatitude seemed written in his face,
And more than a hundred spirits sat within.
"In exitu Israel de Aegypto!"
They chanted all together in one voice,
With whatso in that psalm is after written.
Then made he sign of holy rood upon them,
Whereat all cast themselves upon the shore,
And he departed swiftly as he came.
The throng which still remained there unfamiliar
Seemed with the place, all round about them gazing,
As one who in new matters makes essay.
On every side was darting forth the day.
The sun, who had with his resplendent shafts
From the mid-heaven chased forth the Capricorn,
When the new people lifted up their faces
Towards us, saying to us: "If ye know,
Show us the way to go unto the mountain."
And answer made Virgilius: "Ye believe
Perchance that we have knowledge of this place,
But we are strangers even as yourselves.
Just now we came, a little while before you,
Another way, which was so rough and steep,
That mounting will henceforth seem sport to us."
The souls who had, from seeing me draw breath,
Become aware that I was still alive,
Pallid in their astonishment became;
And as to messenger who bears the olive
The people throng to listen to the news,
And no one shows himself afraid of crowding,
So at the sight of me stood motionless
Those fortunate spirits, all of them, as if
Oblivious to go and make them fair.
One from among them saw I coming forward,
As to embrace me, with such great affection,
That it incited me to do the like.
O empty shadows, save in aspect only!
Three times behind it did I clasp my hands,
As oft returned with them to my own breast!
I think with wonder I depicted me;
Whereat the shadow smiled and backward drew;
And I, pursuing it, pressed farther forward.
Gently it said that I should stay my steps;
Then knew I who it was, and I entreated
That it would stop awhile to speak with me.
It made reply to me: "Even as I loved thee
In mortal body, so I love thee free;
Therefore I stop; but wherefore goest thou?"
"My own Casella! to return once more
There where I am, I make this journey," said I;
"But how from thee has so much time be taken?"
And he to me: "No outrage has been done me,
If he who takes both when and whom he pleases
Has many times denied to me this passage,
For of a righteous will his own is made.
He, sooth to say, for three months past has taken
Whoever wished to enter with all peace;
Whence I, who now had turned unto that shore
Where salt the waters of the Tiber grow,
Benignantly by him have been received.
Unto that outlet now his wing is pointed,
Because for evermore assemble there
Those who tow'rds Acheron do not descend."
And I: "If some new law take not from thee
Memory or practice of the song of love,
Which used to quiet in me all my longings,
Thee may it please to comfort therewithal
Somewhat this soul of mine, that with its body
Hitherward coming is so much distressed."
"Love, that within my mind discourses with me,"
Forthwith began he so melodiously,
The melody within me still is sounding.
My Master, and myself, and all that people
Which with him were, appeared as satisfied
As if naught else might touch the mind of any.
We all of us were moveless and attentive
Unto his notes; and lo! the grave old man,
Exclaiming: "What is this, ye laggard spirits?
What negligence, what standing still is this?
Run to the mountain to strip off the slough,
That lets not God be manifest to you."
Even as when, collecting grain or tares,
The doves, together at their pasture met,
Quiet, nor showing their accustomed pride,
If aught appear of which they are afraid,
Upon a sudden leave their food alone,
Because they are assailed by greater care;
So that fresh company did I behold
The song relinquish, and go tow'rds the hill,
As one who goes, and knows not whitherward;
Nor was our own departure less in haste.
This elaborate way of telling time by the position of the sun and other stars in the heavens, inopportune in hell, where the sight of the sky is denied the travelers, will be a frequent feature of Purgatorio. The four main points of reference are here (and on other occasions), Jerusalem, site of the Crucifixion and thus the most significant point on earth; the Ganges, 90o to the east; the antipodes, 180o to the south; and Cádiz, in Spain, 270o around the circle of the meridian, a great circle arc over Jerusalem. This makes a right angle in its intersection with the plane made by the equator, which extends into a similar great-circle arc known as the horizon. Each of the four equidistant points covered by the meridian is six hours from the other. Thus we are told that it was 6pm in Jerusalem, midnight over India, and dawn here at the antipodes. The location of noon is left unexpressed, but we can understand that it is in fact over Cadiz, and may choose to understand that the omission forces us to supply this last indication and perhaps to consider that this is the place associated with Ulysses' departure on his 'mad flight' (Inf. XXVI.106-111), especially since the concluding verses of the last canto had so clearly reminded the reader of Ulysses' voyage (see the note to Purg. I.130-132 and Hollander, “Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 32-33).
The phrase at vv. 4-6 is complicated, but eventually comprehensible. In the northern hemisphere, when the nights grow longer than the day after the autumn solstice, the sun appears in Libra, as a result no longer a nighttime constellation, and thus the Scales 'fall from her [night's] hand.' However, in the northern hemisphere it is now just after the spring solstice and the night is found in Libra, while the sun is in Aries.
The mood of the travelers, compared by many, perhaps beginning with Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to this passage), to pilgrims on their way to earn indulgence for their sins, is not particularly eager. Rather, they seem to hesitate. Vittorio Russo (“Il canto II del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. III [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 243, cites Hebrews 11:13-16, with its insistence on the nature of life as a pilgrimage, as relevant to this tercet. That passage is contained in one of the most significant texts in the New Testament giving credence to the idea that those who were born before Christ were nonetheless responsible for and capable of believing in Christ to come (all of Heb. 11 insists on the faith found in the great figures of the Old Testament). But our pilgrims seem more at home with 'Egypt' than they are eager for the New Jerusalem, as were the Hebrews themselves in the desert (see Exodus 14:11-12; 16:2-3; 17:3) because they lacked a full measure of zeal for their journey. For a discussion of the hesitance that suffuses this canto see Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 [1982], pp. 53-70). As Poletto (comm. to this passage) was perhaps the first to note, the phrasing here reflects that of Vita nuova XIII.6, where, in a simile, Dante is unsure about the path he should pursue.
This is, perhaps surprisingly, the first simile of Purgatorio (there was a brief comparison at Purg. I.119-120; another at verse 11, just above). While the first canto (vv. 19-21) involved a special relationship to Venus, this canto turns instead to Mars, treated here, as was Venus there, as morning star. In his Convivio, where Dante associates the first seven heavens with the liberal arts, he says (II.xiii.20-24) that Mars may be compared to Music. He concludes (24): 'Moreover, Music attracts to itself the human spirits, which are, as it were, principally vapors of the heart, so that they almost completely cease their activity; this happens likewise to the entire soul when it hears music, and the virtue of all of them, as it were, runs to the spirit of sense, which receives the sound' (tr. Lansing). We shall see that these notions will come into play when Casella sings Dante's ode to the new pilgrims at the mountain's shore later in the canto. In his remarks on these verses, Bernardino Daniello was perhaps the first commentator to bring that passage in Convivio to bear on this text. But the valence of the passage as it is reflected here puts the alluring red light of Mars (and, later, listening to music, which is what Mars signifies in the earlier text) into a negative correspondence with the alacrity and whiteness of the swiftly approaching angel. Looking west toward Mars implies turning one's back on the sunrise to the east. Porena's commentary (to vv. 13-15) observes that Dante, as a Tuscan, was acquainted with this view of the sea, one found on the western – and not the eastern – shore of the Italian peninsula.
The opening verse of the simile has caused considerable difficulty because the early texts offered probably unacceptable readings and later attempts have been divided into two solutions, roughly as follows: either 'sul presso del mattino' (at the nearing of dawn) or 'sorpreso dal mattino' (covered over by the dawn). This last is Petrocchi's solution, and we have followed it, if at a distance, in our translation. Gabriele Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 79-81, supports Petrocchi's reading.
The gradual revelation of the approaching presence (more light, greater size, two elements of white that then resolve to three [two wings and the angel's 'body']) culminates in Virgil's recognition of the angelic nature of the steersman. For a brief account of the nature of and doctrinal problems inherent in Dante's angelology see Alison Cornish (“Angels,” The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing [New York: Garland, 2000], pp. 37-45).
The term galeotto (helmsman, steersman) has been used for Phlegyas, who carried Dante and Virgil across Styx in his skiff (Inf. VIII.17 – galeoto). It had previously been used by Francesca (Inf. V.137), as a proper noun, to cast blame upon the character Gallehault in the Arthurian romance that led, according to her, to her undoing. The present galeotto is surely to be understood as a better-intentioned guide. Dante has been cleansed by Virgil to be in the purified condition fitting for his presence before exactly such a being, 'il primo ministro... di paradiso' (Purg. I.98-99). Hell had its guardian demons; purgatory has guardian angels.
Virgil's two balanced exclamations insist on the supernatural abilities of the angel. The first has the effect of reminding us of Ulysses. Where Ulysses made wings of oars (Inf. XXVI.135), this traveler over the same seas before the mount of purgatory requires neither oar nor sail. The word for 'oar' was last heard in Ulysses' speech (as was the phrase 'suol marino' [ocean floor] of verse 15 at Inf. XXVI.129). The word for poop deck, poppa, introduced to the poem to describe Ulysses' position as captain of his ship (Inf. XXVI.124, repeated at XXVI.140) now recurs to set this celestial steersman against his less worthy counterpart (Purg. II.43). For this argument see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 34-35).
The second tercet, describing the heaven-directed wings of the angel, may remind us of Satan's (Inf. XXXIV.46-52) huge wings, if only by antithesis.
Lombardi, discussing this verse, pointed out that the 'uccel divino' (heavenly bird) stands in opposition to the demon Farfarello, a 'malvagio uccello' (filthy bird – Inf. XXII.96).
This is the first time in the poem that Dante is 'blinded by the light.' Such scenes will recur for the rest of the two final cantiche.
This detail almost necessarily reminds us of the contrary depiction of Charon's skiff in (Aen. VI.413-414), sinking into the water of the swamp beneath Aeneas's weight, as Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-42) was perhaps the first to note explicitly. See also Inferno VIII.25-27, when Dante's weight makes Phlegyas's skiff sink in the muddy water of the Styx. And see the note to Inferno III.136.
A much-debated text. The vast majority of codices and of commentators prefers the variant not chosen by Petrocchi: 'tal che parea beato per iscripto' (in such manner as to seem blessed by inscription). Petrocchi chooses the variant 'tal che faria beato pur descripto' (in such a way as to render blessed anyone who reads or hears him described). While we strongly side with the majority view, we have followed Petrocchi here as always. Were we to depart from him, our translation would run as follows: 'whose look made him seem inscribed in blessedness.' See this writer's earlier opinion (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 42): 'My own view is that the verse should be read in the spirit of Landino's gloss, which holds that he seemed 'inscribed, that is, confirmed in bliss,' in the sense (also tentatively lent support by Portirelli [comm. to vv. 44-45]) that he is written in the Book of Life' (see Apoc. 20:12 and discussion in Hollander [“Dante's 'Book of the Dead': A Note on Inferno XXIX, 57,” Studi Danteschi 54 (1982), pp. 31-51]. For the only other use in the Commedia of the past participle of scrivere as a verbal noun see Inferno XIX.54 – and see the similar usage in Convivio I.viii.5. In both these instances the verbal noun refers to a written document, as I believe it does here.' Portirelli (1804) says that the angel 'seemed blessed by eternal and irrevocable decree.' Most of the others – the vast majority of commentators – who read the line as 'parea beato per iscripto' interpret it to mean that the angel looks as though he were written on. Landino, Portirelli, and Hollander believe that he seems blessed because he is inscribed elsewhere, an at least potentially more convincing reading. Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 81-83, reopens the question of the reading of this line, but does not come to a firm conclusion about a preferable variant.
Dante's 'more than a hundred' is a poet's allowable indefinite number, but one based on a very good number indeed, one hundred, number of God (1 0 0 = 1) and of the number of cantos in this poem.
The arriving pilgrims, seated in the ship that carries them to purgation and eventual salvation, sing the Psalm of the Exodus, 114-115 in the modern Bible, 113 in the Vulgate. The text states clearly that they sing all of it in their shared exhilaration. For the informing pattern of the Exodus in this canto (and in the poem as a whole) see, among others, Singleton (“'In exitu Israel de Aegypto,'” Annual Report of the Dante Society 78 [1960], pp. 1-24); Tucker (“'In exitu Isräel de Aegypto': the Divine Comedy in the Light of the Easter Liturgy,” The American Benedictine Review 11 [1960], pp. 43-61). Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), pp. 14-15, 55-69; Armour (“The Theme of Exodus in the First Two Cantos of the Purgatorio,” in Dante Soundings, ed. David Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981], pp. 59-99); and Pasquini (“Dante and the 'Prefaces of Truth': from 'Figure' to 'Completion,'” Italian Studies 54 [1999], pp. 18-25).
For the pertinence of typical medieval rubrics to the Psalm, which divide it into three parts (the miracle of the Exodus, the Hebrews' backsliding worship of the Golden Calf, reaffirmation of God's continuing support), a division that is seen as paralleling the three scenes of the canto (completion of the 'exodus' of the arriving souls, Casella's song as 'idolatrous,' Cato's insistence on the pilgrims' devotion to God) see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 36). Each of these moments is assigned, as it were, a single simile that reflects its central action, the arrival of the ship (vv. 13-18), Dante's unique status as still living in the flesh (vv. 70-74), Cato's rebuke (vv. 124-132).
Since the words of the incipit of this Psalm offer the basis for the analysis of the Commedia as conforming to the analytical practice of allegory as practised by theologians to interpret the Bible offered in the Epistle to Cangrande, it is not surprising that those who believe that Dante is in fact the author of this document make much of its precepts in discussing this tercet. It should be kept in mind that the citation of the Psalm here, ca. 1310, predates the composition of the epistle (ca. 1317-21). Thus the epistle, if it is authentic (as this writer believes: see Hollander, Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993] with bibliography of the debate to that date), does not describe proleptically the procedures of the poem, but reflects them. The two most recent editors of the epistle, Thomas Ricklin (Das Schreiben an Cangrande della Scala [Hamburg: Meiner, 1993]) and Enzo Cecchini (Epistola a Cangrande [Florence: Giunti, 1995]), both argue strongly for its authenticity. For two attempts to counter the growing consensus that the epistle is, after all, Dante's own, see Brugnoli (“Ancora sull'Epistola a Cangrande,” Critica del testo 1 [1998], pp. 985-1008) and Inglese (“Epistola a Cangrande: questione aperta,” Critica del testo 2 [1999], pp. 951-74).
For this moment in which, according to a recent discussant, Dante decisively confronts and rejects the 'hard' poetics of his rime petrose for the 'liquid' poetry of salvation see Gianni Vinciguerra (“Petra / Aqua: della funzionalità di alcuni salmi nella Commedia,” Critica del testo 3 [1999], esp. pp. 896-909). For the program of.Psalms and hymns utilized by Dante in the Purgatorio see Antonio Mastrobuono (Essays on Dante's Philosophy of History [Florence: Olschki, 1979], pp. 181-89); Louis La Favia (“' ...ché quivi per canti,' [Purg. XII, 113]: Dante's Programmatic Use of Psalms and Hymns in the Purgatory,” Studies in Iconography 9 [1984-86], pp. 53-65); and Erminia Ardissono (“I Canti liturgici nel Purgatorio dantesco,” Dante Studies 108 [1990], pp. 39-65).
Like the heavenly messenger at the walls of Dis (Inf. IX.100-103), this angel, after blessing his flock, also moves away from those he has helped as quickly as possible, but on this occasion not from disgust at the place in which he finds himself, but to return to Ostia for more saved souls.
The souls fling themselves upon the shore (si gittar) just as the damned fling themselves (gittansi) upon Charon's boat (Inf. III.116), but with key elements in the scenes significantly reversed, though both groups are spurred by their desire for justice.
The second scene of the canto begins with the mutual pleasure and confusion of the two groups that play the major roles in it, the crowd of pilgrims and the two travelers, both less (in Virgil's case) and more than saved souls, since Dante is destined to return and will then be a uniquely experienced penitent.
As Bosco/Reggio point out in their commentary to these lines, all the images in them are derived from hunting. The sun (Apollo as archer), now risen above the horizon, shoots its rays (arrows) everywhere, striking the constellation Capricorn, 90o from Aries. Consequently, Capricorn moves several degrees down the sky from its highest point, where it was at dawn.
For the resemblances of the mount of purgatory to Mt. Sinai see Carol Kaske (“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 [1971], pp. 1-18.). For her the mountain is not only its former self, site of the divine gift of Ten Commandments to Moses, but a place of Christian pilgrimage under the New Law.
Virgil's reply to the saved souls identifies himself and Dante as being 'pilgrims,' in the generic sense that they are travelers in a foreign land. In a more limited and Christian sense, only Dante and the new arrivals are truly on a pilgrimage. This is the first of nine uses of the noun or adjective peregrino that are distributed through the final two cantiche. For the view that the controlling idea of the Commedia is that of a pilgrimage see, among others, John Demaray (Dante and the Book of the Cosmos [Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987], pp. 1-60); Bruno Basile (“Dante e l'idea di peregrinatio,” in his Il tempo e le forme: studi letterari da Dante a Gadda [Modena: Mucchi, 1990 (1986)], pp. 9-36); Julia Holloway (The Pilgrim and the Book [New York: Peter Lang, 1992], esp. pp. 57-84); and Picone (“Inferno VIII: il viaggio contrastato,” L'Alighieri 9 [1997], pp. 35-50).
Virgil's recollection of the difficult journey up through hell is made to reflect the poet's own formulation in Inferno I.5 exactly: aspra e forte (dense and harsh), the adjectives there referring to the 'dark wood' of the world in which Dante found himself at the outset.
These are Virgil's last words in the canto. In fact he nearly disappears from the scene once Dante and Casella take over center stage. He will be mentioned as forming part of the group of those who are rapt by Casella's song (verse 115) and as departing in haste with Dante in the canto's final verse (133). In both cases he is behaving less like a guide than like a lost soul. In a sense, this is the protagonist's first solo flight in the Commedia, a moment in which he is potentially in command of the situation. His success is hardly dazzling.
Satan, with his three heads, had seemed a maraviglia to the protagonist in Inferno XXXIV.37. In the last canto it was the miraculous 'resurrection' of the Christlike humble plant (verse 134) that had seemed a 'wonder' to him. Now it is he who causes wonder in the onlookers, since he is present in the flesh.
This second simile of the canto compares Dante's living visage to the olive branch carried by a messenger of peace. In other words, his very presence in this precinct is an additional assurance to the new souls that God's justice and promise of a kingdom of peace as the final haven for a Christian life was truly offered and truly kept. They have arrived, even if the way before them is uncertain and difficult, since they still have to perform their ritual cleansing of even the memory of sin. While the earliest commentators do not cite a Virgilian source for the simile, beginning with Daniello (comm. to vv. 70-71), who was followed by Lombardi (comm. to vv. 70-71), Portirelli (comm. to vv. 65-70), Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 70-72), and Scartazzini (comm. to verse 70), later ones point to two possible Virgilian sources: Aeneid VIII.115-116 and XI.100-101. Andreoli (comm. to verse 70) cites only the first of these. In the second, messengers from the camp of Turnus, holding up olive branches, seek permission of Aeneas to gather the bodies of the dead for burial; in the first it is Aeneas himself, standing upon the puppis (quarterdeck) of his ship, who holds forth the branch of peace to Pallas, son of Evander. Pallas is amazed (obstipuit – verse 121) by Aeneas's cordial gesture and accedes to it. The entire context there seems to fit the details of Dante's scene better, Dante as Aeneas 'invading' the homeland of those with whom he will be allied. As Hollander has pointed out (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 37), the ominous undertones present in Virgil's scene (Aeneas will in fact bring not peace but war, one in which Pallas will become the central sacrificial partner) seem necessarily excluded here.
This final detail, on the other hand, does inject a note of moral tension, since it reveals the predisposition of these souls to linger where they are rather than to proceed upward. See the note to vv. 10-12. Their openness to negligence begins the conflict narrated in this second section of the canto, in which Casella's song will so engage them that they will finally have to be chastised by Cato. See Francesco da Buti's comment to this verse, insisting on 'their negligence, which follows from their delight in worldly things.'
The verse carries an overtone of a line in the passage from Convivio describing the effect of Mars as music, moving the hearers to such a state that they 'quasi cessano da ogni operazione' (almost completely cease their activity). See the note to Purgatorio II.13-18. Dante is, in effect, their 'music,' and they respond more to the miracle of his fleshly presence than to the sign of God's love that it gives, and which should be acknowledged.
This as yet unidentified soul (we will learn his name, Casella, at verse 91) has recognized Dante and advances to embrace him; Dante, filled with a proper Christian affection, responds to his embracer's emotion without any personalization, returning love for love without earthly distinctions. It is a very good beginning for a pilgrim in purgatory.
This much-admired scene is modeled on another, but which one? Virgil's epic (Aen. II.792-794 and VI.700-702) contains three identical lines of verse describing a failed embrace. The first commentators opt for the latter, Aeneas's attempt to hold fast Anchises' paternal ghost. But John of Serravalle, in his commentary to these lines, thinks, in a departure from that opinion, of Aeneas's identical effort to embrace the dead form of his wife, Creusa, in the second book. He was followed by Vellutello (comm. to vv. 79-87). Modern commentators almost universally return to the more familiar scene in Book VI, and it has been rare in the last century of glossing to find anyone even contemplating the earlier scene involving Creusa. One would expect, perhaps, that commentators would at least discuss their options. But such is not the case. For reasons to prefer the less favored text, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 38 [but see his earlier identical view (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975], p. 349)]), pointing out that (1) the poet will later and unmistakably refer to Aeneas's attempted embrace of Anchises (Par. XV.25-27) and arguing that it would be less than likely for him to do so here as well, since he had two such moments to choose from; (2) the context, in which Casella will shortly be singing a song of love to Dante, would argue for the greater appropriateness of Creusa to Anchises. One discussant argues for a double reference here; see George Economou (“Self-Consciousness of Poetic Activity in Dante and Langland,” in Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages, ed. Lois Ebin [Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984]), p. 180. (For the supposed program of 'failed' embraces in this cantica see the note to Purg. XXI.130-136.) And now see Wei Wei Yeo (“Embodiment in the Commedia: Dante's Exilic and Poetic Self-Consciousness,” Dante Studies 121 [2003 {2006}]), p. 92 (n. 48), who is in agreement with Economou, but is apparently unaware of her Renaissance precursors, not to mention her more contemporary one.
For the apostrophe of the 'empty shades, except in seeming' see, as Tommaseo suggested in 1837, Inferno VI.36, the phrase 'lor vanità che par persona' (their emptiness, which seems real bodies). The shades of the gluttons there and of all posthumous souls have this in common, but we must wait for Statius's long disquisition in canto XXV to learn how the 'aerial body' of the dead is produced.
Casella's smile is the first one we have seen since Limbo, when Virgil smiled to see the poets of antiquity welcome Dante as they prepared to include him in their noble company (Inf. IV.99). Smiles, understandably absent from the visages of those in hell, will be more frequent in purgatory, some dozen of them, and still more so in paradise (two dozen).
Only after Dante hears Casella's voice does he recognize him, so distant seems the world of earth. See the entirely similar moment with Forese Donati (Purg. XXIII.43-45) and one somewhat similar with his sister Piccarda (Par. III.58-63).
Both Dante and Casella are eager to stay and converse; we will soon enough understand that, for all the humanity and pleasantness of their attitudes, Cato has other plans for them.
Casella, finally named, was obviously, from the context of the scene, a musician. That is really all we know with any certainty about him. Nonetheless, it is clear that he is someone whom Dante actually knew. Whether he was from Florence or Pistoia (or even Siena – the commentators are puzzled and offer these possibilities, most of them plumping for Florence) we do not know. Whether he actually set one or more of Dante's poems to music we do not know. For some sense of his possible identity and activity see Luigi Peirone, 'Casella' (ED.1970.1); Fabio Bisogni (“Precisazioni sul Casella dantesco,” Quadrivium 12 [1971(1974)], pp. 81-91) and Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh (“I musicisti di Dante [Casella, Lippo, Schochetto] in Nicolò de' Rossi,” Studi Danteschi 48 [1971], esp. pp. 156-58).
It comes as something of a surprise to realize that Dante has not spoken since Inferno XXXIV.100-105. His silence in the first canto of the new cantica is probably meant to suggest the awe he feels in this new, mysterious, and sacred place. Casella, representing the familiarity of Tuscany, allows him to break the spell.
Casella has evidently been dead some time (for at least slightly more than three months, as verse 98 will make plain) and Dante wonders why he has been so long between death and his first step toward salvation, arrival in purgatory. Beginning with Poletto (comm. to vv. 94-99) and Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 (1896)], p. 168, commentators have seen a connection here with Charon's unwillingness to take certain of the waiting shades across Acheron (they all are eager to be taken) and in fact picking and choosing among the waiting throng (Aen. VI.315-316). We might continue the thought: In Dante's poem Charon takes all bound for hell at once; only those bound for purgatory need to be winnowed by the transporting angel, with some having to stay longer in the world, near Ostia, thus mirroring a sort of prepurgation that the poet has invented, offstage, as it were.
Casella's startling narrative at times escapes the sort of attention it requires. This is what we learn: Before the Jubilee Year's plenary indulgence announced by Pope Boniface in February 1300 (retroactive to Christmas of 1299), all those who came to the region around Ostia, where the souls of the saved are gathered, had to await the pleasure of the angel to be taken aboard the ship that we have just seen Casella and the others disembark from. Before 25 December 1299, Casella was denied many times a seat in the ship. We are forced to understand that he was not gifted with a particularly energetic desire for God; i.e., he was a perfect 'brother' to the Dante we meet at the beginning of this canto, a man like those 'who think about the way and in their hearts go on – while still their bodies linger' (Purg. II.11-12). Purgatory is thus divided into three spaces: the mountain of purgation itself, ante-purgatory, and 'pre-ante-purgatory,' located somewhere never described but at or near Ostia. And the laws of this place themselves underwent a change in late 1299, for after that date anyone who wanted to depart for the 'holy land' would be accommodated by the angel. (Dante has apparently, on no authority but his own, decided that the plenary indulgence for sinners extended to the souls of the justified dead as well.) This requires that we understand that during the past three months Casella did not want to travel south toward heaven. Given his behavior once he arrives at the shore, however, this is not totally surprising. Finally, precisely three months after the merciful decree was made, he decided that he wanted to leave. The date: 25 March 1300, the Florentine New Year. Is it coincidence that this, the most likely date for the beginning of Dante's journey (see the notes to Inf. I.1; Inf. I.11; Purg. I.19-21), is also that on which Casella probably set out? Whether or not it is, we have the delightful spectacle of these two miraculous voyagers, each starting somewhere in Italy, one gliding over the seas, the other moving under the earth, arriving at the antipodes within minutes of one another, reunited in friendship and peace. (Poletto's discussion [comm. to vv. 94-99] of some of these problems is one of the few in which these complex matters are closely and suggestively examined.)
The protagonist's language is laced with diametrically opposed terms: 'new law' and 'songs of love.' Merely hearing them, one intuits that there is an oppositional relationship between them. Daniello's commentary (1568) asserts that there is indeed a 'new law' in purgatory, where 'one does not sing vain and lascivious things, but hymns and psalms in praise of God, and prays to Him.' In this first confrontation, looking ahead to the song not yet sung, the 113th Psalm is that of the 'New Law,' and is juxtaposed against the love song that Dante wrote for a woman in the last century. It is this kind that, earthbound as he now again is, the protagonist longs for.
Petrocchi's text for verse 108 reads 'doglie' (sorrows) and not 'voglie' (longings). Hardly any Dantist currently admires this choice, and the vast majority urges a return to the 1921 reading, including the translators. For one of the stronger arguments for such a return see Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 (1982]), pp. 67-70; see also Frasca (“Dante, Purg. II, 13, 44, 109. Note filologiche ed esegetiche,” Esperienze letterarie 9, 2 [1984]), pp. 83-88. And see the similar locution (Purg. III.41): 'lor disio quetato,' where the verb quetare is joined to a word for desire or longing. Once again, we have followed Petrocchi, despite our disagreement. But see Sanguineti's edition (Dantis Alagherii Comedia [Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001]) which prints voglie.
Dante's soul, wearied by his bodily weight, remembers his condition at the beginning of Inferno I.22: in simile, his mind, in stress, is like the breath of a man escaping from death by drowning, affannata (laboring). If he seems better off now than he was then, he is still in considerable difficulty.
Casella's song is Dante's song, the second canzone found in Convivio. It was composed in celebration of Lady Philosophy. That sounds innocent or even positive. On the other hand, she is, early on in Convivio, specifically designated as having replaced Beatrice in Dante's affections. Within the confines of Convivio this is not problematic. In the Commedia, in which Beatrice is the moving force for so much, it is. And thus some critics have embraced what seems at first an unlikely position: that Dante is here denigrating his affection for that lady. For this argument see Ann Hallock (“Dante's selva oscura and Other Obscure selvas,” Forum Italicum 6 [1972]), pp. 72-74, and Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975]), pp. 353-55. For a restatement of the more traditional view see Ignazio Baldelli (“Linguistica e interpretazione: l'amore di Catone, di Casella, di Carlo Martello e le canzoni del «Convivio» II e III,” in Miscellanea di studi linguistici in onore di Walter Belardi, ed. P. Cipriano, P. Di Giovine, M. Mancini, vol. II [Rome: n. p., 1996], esp. p. 549). As long ago as 1955 Fausto Montanari (“Il canto secondo del Purgatorio,” Humanitas 10 [1955], pp. 359-63) interpreted the scene as being essentially oppositional, a position that was redeveloped in the 1970s by Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986], pp. 186-94) and Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975], pp. 348-63) and followed by several others, including Gorni (“Costanza della memoria e censura dell'umano nell'Antipurgatorio,” Studi Danteschi 54 [1982], pp. 58-62; Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), pp. 31-40; and Edoardo Sanguineti (“Infernal Acoustics: Sacred Song and Earthly Song,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), pp. 74-77. For medieval musical theory as supporting this conception of an oppositional strategy in the structuring of the canto's two songs Amilcare see Iannucci (“Casella's Song and the Tuning of the Soul,” Thought 65 [1990]), pp. 42-44. But for general opposition to such ways of reading the episode see Baldelli (“Linguistica e interpretazione: l'amore di Catone, di Casella, di Carlo Martello e le canzoni del «Convivio» II e III,” in Miscellanea di studi linguistici in onore di Walter Belardi, ed. P. Cipriano, P. Di Giovine, M. Mancini, vol. II [Rome: n. p., 1996], pp. 535-55), and Muresu (“L'inno e il canto d'amore,” La Rassegna della letteratura italiana 104 [2000], pp. 5-48). For a rejoinder to Hollander see Pertile (“Dante, lo scoglio e la vesta,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995]), p. 91.
Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 39), noted that Cato's rejecting attitude toward Marcia is to be contrasted with Dante's apparent affection for the lady of the canzone.
For discussions of the possibility that Casella actually set this canzone of Dante see Mario Marti (“Dolcezza di memorie ed assoluto etico nel canto di Casella [Purg. II],” in his Studi su Dante [Galatina: Congedo, 1984 (1962)]), pp. 81-88, and Fabio Bisogni (“Precisazioni sul Casella dantesco,” Quadrivium 12 [1971 (1974)]), pp. 81-91.
The sweetness of the song is memorable even now, says the poet. One can see why most readers of this scene take these words as confirming the poet's approval of a positive feeling. But see Inferno XXVI.19-24, where the poet 'grieves again' as he 'grieved then' for the lost Ulysses. Both Ulysses and his own Convivial ode are marked as temptations the strength of which are both still vividly felt by him, even though he now knows better than to accede to them.
In this context James Chiampi (“Augustinian Distentio and the Structure of Dante's Purgatory,” Canadian Journal of Italian Studies 18 [1995], pp. 1-21) discusses the pertinence for Dante of Augustine's discussion of distentio, distraction that leads away from truth.
Cato's return was not in program, as is clear from verse 106 in the previous canto. He evidently believed that this specially privileged Christian visitor to purgatory would know how to behave better than he does. But now he has not only backslid himself, but is involving the whole new contingent of the saved into behaving similarly. Cato sounds exactly like St. Paul, urging them all to 'put off the old man and put on the new' (Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9). For the closeness of Dante's thought here to Colossians 2 and 3, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], pp. 40-41): 'And Cato's identity here is not only Pauline, for the scene is clearly reminiscent of Moses's discovery of the falsely worshipping Hebrews before that golden calf (Exodus 32:18-19 – see Carol Kaske [“Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory,” Dante Studies 89 (1971), pp. 1-18] which the text of Psalm 113 had already set before the minds of all who listened to what their own lips were singing only moments before. Echoing God's command and Moses's compliance ('neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount' – Exodus 34:3), Cato sends the music-lovers flying.' For the Pauline references see also Paola Rigo (Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994]), pp. 93-94.
The deeper significance of the word scoglio (slough) is the subject of Lino Pertile's careful analysis (“Dante, lo scoglio e la vesta,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995]) of the patristic sources for the concept of the rind, the remains, as in the shed hide or skin of a dead creature, which show that the central motif, deriving from Genesis 3:21, Colossians 3:9-10, and texts found in Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Augustine, involves the animal skins put on by Adam and Eve to hide their guilty nakedness after the Fall (thus garbing the 'old man' in dead garments, symbolic of his own mortality) and the injunction of Paul to put off the old tunic of fleshliness in order to put on the new life of faith in Christ. This writer is in accord with Pertile's general interpretation of this image, but continues to believe that the context of the passage, which sets the Convivial ode against the 113th Psalm, urges us to understand that Dante's earlier ode, by sliding back away from veneration of Beatrice, is a record of his previous sinful intellectual and affective activity. For arguments parallel to Pertile's, denying that Cato's rebuke of Dante involves the ode, see Scott (“Dante and Philosophy,” Annali d'italianistica 8 [1990], pp. 258-77). For both these writers Cato's rebuke is only general, referring to the necessarily sinful condition of these saved souls before they undergo their purgation. Those who believe the central resonance of the two songs in Dante himself necessarily involves a recantation of some of his earlier views naturally find this scene filled with reminiscence of his earlier divagations from Beatrice and the true way to God. This is one aspect of a major dispute among Dantists at this time and involves the central question of the intellectual biography of the poet. For another dimension of the dispute, see the discussion of the 'sweet new style' in the note to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63.
Those who argue that Cato is being overzealous should pay closer attention to this strong charge he makes against the negligent spirits. Whatever the 'slough' (scoglio) signifies, their adherence to it prevents their seeing God. In the world of the Commedia that can never be a slight problem.
This third and final simile of the canto likens the new pilgrims to doves (for the three programmatic references to these birds in the Commedia, here and in Inf. V.82 and Par. XXV.19, see Shoaf [“Dante's colombi and the Figuralism of Hope in the Divine Comedy,” Dante Studies 93 (1975), pp. 27-59]). And see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 41): 'Their saved souls hunger on high, but their appetitive natures are not yet wrung dry of earthly longing. Thus they are careless in their ingestion (see Matthew 13:36-43) for the parable of the wheat and the tares alluded to in their failure to make a decision between 'biado o loglio'). If music be the food of love, there is also a heavenly music. We and the pilgrims know that this is true. They have sung it themselves in this very place.'
The final verse, in its understated brevity, conveys a feeling for the two travelers' guilty acceptance of Cato's command and their hasty departure in shame.
'The second canto of the Purgatorio dramatizes the need for interpretation by presenting two songs to its audience, the arriving pilgrims. It is clear that we comprise a still more crucial audience. Most of us have chosen to follow the lead of the one whom we take to be our leader, Dante himself. (His several intellectually or morally flawed responses as he moved through Inferno have not, apparently, been cogent enough sign of his frequent inadequacy as guide to our reactions.) He, lost in the beauty of his own old song, either fails to understand or else forgets the message of the new song which he has heard first, and which should have served as a rein on his enthusiasm. It is as old as Exodus and as new as the dawn which brings it, this Easter Sunday morning on the shore of the mountain. Even its angelic sanction has not prevented most of us from leaving the theater humming the other song, that lovely little Italian air, “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona.” One can only imagine Dante's reaction as he hears us go out, back into the night' (Hollander, “Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990], p. 41).
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
Please enter a search term.
Copyright | © 2024 Trustees of Dartmouth College. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
