'Leaving behind her that so cruel sea, the bark of poesy now spreads
her sails to speed o'er happier waters; and I sing of that mid kingdom
where the soul of man is freed from stain, till worthy to ascend to
Heaven.'[54] Such are the opening words of Dante's Purgatory, and they
drop like balm upon our seared and wounded hearts when we have escaped
from the dread abode of eternal ill-desert.
'Man, atoning for the misuse of his free will,' may be regarded as the
subject of this poem. And it brings it in a sense nearer to us than
either the Hell or the Paradise. Perhaps it ought not to surprise us
that the Purgatory has not by any means taken such a hold of the
general imagination as the Hell, and that its machinery and incidents
are therefore far less widely known; for the power of the Purgatory
does not overwhelm us like that of the Inferno whether we understand or
no. There are passages indeed in the poem which take the reader by
storm and force themselves upon his memory, but as a whole it must be
felt in its deeper spiritual meaning to be felt at all. Its gentleness
is ultimately as strong as the relentless might of the Hell, but it
works more slowly and takes time to sink into our hearts and diffuse
its influence there. Nor again need we be surprised that the inner
circle of Dante students often concentrate their fullest attention and
admiration upon the Paradise, for it is the Paradise in which the poet
is most absolutely unique and unapproached, and in it his admirers
rightly find the supreme expression of his spirit.
And yet there is much in the Purgatory that seems to render it
peculiarly fitted to support our spiritual life and help us in our
daily conflict, much which we might reasonably have expected would give
its images and allegories a permanent place in the devout heart of
Christendom; for, as already hinted, it is nearer to us in our
struggles and imperfections, in our aspirations and our conscious
unworthiness, nearer to us in our love of purity and our knowledge that
our own hearts are stained with sin, in our desire for the fullness of
God's light, and our knowledge that we are not yet worthy or ready to
receive it; it is nearer to us in its piercing appeals, driven home to
the moral experience of every day and hour, nearer to us in its mingled
longing and resignation, in its mingled consolations and sufferings,
nearer to us in its deep unrest of unattained but unrelinquished
ideals, than either the Hell in its ghastly harmony of impenitence and
suffering, or the Paradise in its ineffable fruition.
Moreover, the allegorical appropriateness of the various punishments is
far more obvious and simple, and the spiritual significance of the
whole machinery clearer and more direct, in the Purgatory than in the
Hell. In a word, the Purgatory is more obviously though not more truly,
more directly though not more profoundly, moral and spiritual in its
purport than the Hell.
Dante addresses some of the sufferers on the fifth circle of Purgatory
as 'chosen ones of God whose pains are soothed by justice and by
hope.'[55] And in truth the spirits in Purgatory are already utterly
separated from their sins in heart and purpose, are already chosen ones
of God. They are deeply sensible of the justice of their punishment,
and they are fed by the certain hope that at last, when purifying pain
has done its work, their past sins will no longer separate them from
God, they will not only be parted in sympathy and emotion from their
own sinful past, but will be so cut off from it as no longer to feel it
as their own, no longer to recognise it as a part of themselves, no
longer to be weighed down by it. Then they will rise away from it into
God's presence. 'Repenting and forgiving,' says one of them, 'we passed
from life, at peace with God, who pierces our hearts with longing to
see Him.'[56]
The souls in Purgatory, then, are already transformed by the thirst for
the living water, already filled with the longing to see God, already
at one with Him in will, already gladdened by the hope of entering into
full communion with Him. But they do not wish to go into His presence
yet. The sense of shame and the sense of justice forbid it. They feel
that the unexpiated stains of former sin still cleave to them, making
them unfit for Heaven, and they love the purifying torments which are
burning those stains away. In the topmost circle of Purgatory, amongst
the fierce flames from which Dante would have hurled himself into
molten glass for coolness, he sees souls whose cheeks flush at the
memory of their sin with a shame that adds a burning to the burning
flame; whilst others, clustering at the edge that they may speak with
him, yet take good heed to keep within the flame, lest for one moment
they should have respite from the fierce pain which is purging away
their sins and drawing them nearer to their desire.[57]
Sweet hymns of praise and supplication are the fitting solace of this
purifying pain; and as Dante passes through the first of the narrow
ascents that lead from circle to circle of Purgatory, he may well
contrast this place of torment with the one that he has left, may well
exclaim, 'Ah me! how diverse are these straits from those of Hell!'[58]
Penitence, humility, and peace--though not the highest or the fullest
peace--are the key-notes of the Purgatory.
* * * * *
When Dante issued from the deadly shades of Hell, his cheeks all
stained with tears, his eyes and heart heavy with woe, his whole frame
spent with weariness and agony, the sweet blue heavens stretched above
him, and his eyes, that for so long had gazed on nought but horror,
rested in their peaceful depths; Venus, the morning star, brightened
the east, and the Southern Cross poured its splendour over the heavens;
daybreak was at hand, and the poets were at the foot of the mount of
Purgatory.
The sea rippled against the mountain, and reeds, the emblems of
humility, ever yielding to the wave that swept them, clustered round
the shore. Dante and Virgil went down to the margin, and there the
living poet bathed away the stains and tears of Hell.
Ere long the waves were skimmed by a light bark, a radiant angel
standing in the prow, bearing the souls of the redeemed, who must yet
be purified, singing the psalm, 'When Israel came out of Egypt.'
Amongst the shades thus borne to the mount of purification was Dante's
friend Casella, the singer and musician. How often had his voice lulled
all Dante's cares to sleep, and 'quieted all his desires,' and now it
seemed as though he were come to bring his troubled heart to peace, to
rest him in his utter weariness of body and of soul.
So, at his entreaty, Casella raised his voice, and all the shades
gathered entranced around him as he sang a noble canzone composed by
Dante himself in years gone by.[59] The sweet sound never ceased to
echo in the poet's memory--not even the ineffable harmonies of Paradise
drowned those first strains of peace that soothed him after his awful
toil.
But Purgatory is no place of rest, and Casella's song was rudely
interrupted by the guardian of the place, who cried aloud, 'How now, ye
sluggard souls! What negligence and what delay is here? Speed to the
mountain! Rid you of the crust that lets not God be manifest to you!'
To purge away our sins is not to rest; and no longing for repose must
tempt us to delay even for a moment.[60]
Dante draws no flattering picture of the ease of self-purification;
Hell itself hardly gives us such a sense of utter weariness as the
first ascent of the mount of Purgatory. Virgil is on in front, and
Dante cries out, altogether spent, 'Oh, my sweet father, turn thou and
behold how I am left alone unless thou stay;' but Virgil still urges
him on, and after a time comforts him with the assurance that though
the mountain is so hard to scale at first, yet the higher a man climbs
the easier the ascent becomes, till at last it is so sweet and easy to
him that he rises without effort as a boat drops down the stream: then
he may know that the end of his long journey has come, that the weight
of sin is cast off, that his soul obeys its own pure nature, and rises
unencumbered to its God.[61]
The lower portion of the mountain forms a kind of ante-Purgatory,
where the souls in weary exile wait for admission to the purifying pain
for which they long. Here those who have delayed their penitence till
the end of life atone for their wilful alienation by an equal term of
forced delay ere they may enter the blessed suffering of Purgatory.
Here those who have lived in contumacy against the Church expiate their
offences by a thirty-fold exile in the ante-Purgatory; but as we saw in
Hell that Papal absolution will not shield the sinful soul, so we find
in Purgatory that the Papal malediction, the thunders of
excommunication itself, cannot permanently part the repentant soul from
the forgiving God.[62]
When this first exile is at an end, and the lower mountain scaled, the
gate of the true Purgatory is reached. Three steps lead up to it, 'the
first of marble white, so polished and so smooth that in it man beholds
him as he is.' This represents that transparent simplicity and
sincerity of purpose that, throwing off all self-delusion, sees itself
as it is, and is the first step towards true penitence. 'The second
step, darker than purpled black, of rough and calcined stone, all rent
through length and breadth,' represents the contrite heart of true
affliction for past sin. 'The third and crowning mass methought was
porphyry, and flamed like the red blood fresh spouting from the vein.'
This is the glowing love which crowns the work of penitence, and gives
the earnest of a new and purer life. Above these steps an angel stands
to whom Peter gave the keys--the silver key of knowledge and the golden
key of authority--bidding him open to the penitent, and err rather
towards freedom than towards over-sternness.[63]
Within the gate of Purgatory rise the seven terraces where sin is
purged. On the three lower ledges man atones for that perverse and
ill-directed love which seeks another's ill--for love of some sort is
the one sole motive of all action, good or bad.[64] In the lowest
circle the pride that rejoices in its own superiority, and therefore in
the inferiority of others, is purged and expiated. 'As to support a
ceiling or a roof,' says Dante, 'one sees a figure bracket-wise with
knees bent up against it bosom, till the imaged strain begets real
misery in him who sees, so I beheld these shades when close I scanned
them. True it is that less or greater burdens cramped each one or less
or more, yet he whose mien had most of patience, wailing seemed to say,
"I can no more!"'[65]
In the second circle the blind sin of envy is expiated. Here the
eyelids of the envious are ruthlessly pierced and closed by the stitch
of an iron wire, and through the horrid suture gush forth tears of
penitence that bathe the sinner's cheeks. 'Here shall my eyes be
closed,' says Dante, half in shame at seeing those who saw him not,
'here shall my eyes be closed, though open now--but not for long. Far
more I dread the pain of those below; for even now methinks I bend
beneath the load.'[66]
In the third circle the passionate wend their way through a blinding,
stinging smoke, darker than Hell; but all are one in heart, and join
in sweet accord of strain and measure singing the 'Agnus Dei.'
In these three lower circles is expiated the perverse love that, in
pride, in envy, or in passion, seeks another's ill.
Round the fourth or central ledge hurry in ceaseless flight the
laggards whose feeble love of God, though not perverse, was yet
inadequate.
Then on the succeeding circles are punished those whose sin was
excessive and ill-regulated love of earthly things.
There in the fifth round the avaricious and the prodigal, who bent
their thoughts alike to the gross things of earth and lost all power of
good, lie with their faces in the dust and their backs turned to
heaven, pinioned and helpless.
In the sixth circle the gluttonous in lean and ghastly hunger gaze from
hollow eyes 'like rings without the gems,' upon the fruit they may not
taste.[67]
And lastly, in the seventh circle the sin of inchastity is purged, in
flames as fierce as its own reckless passion.
Through all of these circles to which its life on earth has rendered
it liable, the soul must pass, in pain but not in misery; at perfect
peace with God, loving the pain that makes it fit to rise into His
presence, longing for that more perfect union, but not desiring it as
yet because still knowing itself unworthy.
At last the moment comes when this shrinking from God's presence, this
clinging to the pain of Purgatory, has its end. The desire to rise up
surprises the repentant soul, and that desire is itself the proof that
the punishment is over, that the soul is ripe for Heaven. Then, as it
ascends, the whole mountain shakes from base to summit with the mighty
cry of 'Gloria in excelsis!' raised by every soul in Purgatory as the
ransomed and emancipated spirit seeks its home.[68]
Through all these circles Dante is led by Virgil, and here as in Hell
he meets and converses with spirits of the departed. He displays the
same unrivalled power and the same relentless use of it, the same
passionate indignation, the same yearning pity, which take the soul
captive in the earlier poem. In the description of Corso Donati's
charger dragging his mangled body towards the gorge of Hell in ever
fiercer flight; in the indignant protest against the factious spirit of
Italy and the passionate appeal to the Empire; in the description of
the impotent rage of the fiend who is cheated by 'one wretched tear' of
the soul of Buonconte; in the scathing denunciations of the cities of
the Arno;[69] in these and in many another passage the poet of the
Purgatory shows that he is still the poet of the Hell; but it is rather
to the richness of the new thoughts and feelings than to the unabated
vigour and passion of the old ones, that we naturally direct our
attention in speaking of the Purgatory. And these we have by no means
exhausted.
When Dante first entered the gate of Purgatory he heard 'voices mingled
with sweet strains' chanting the Te Deum, and they raised in his heart
such images as when we hear voices singing to the organ and 'partly
catch and partly miss the words.'[70] And this sweet music, only to
find its fullest and distinctest utterance in the Paradise, pervades
almost the whole of the Purgatory, filling it with a reposeful longing
that prepares for the fruition it does not give.
There is a tender and touching simplicity in the records of their
earthly lives which the gentle souls in Purgatory give to our poet.
Take as an example, the story of Pope Adrian V., whom Dante finds
amongst the avaricious: 'A month and little more I felt the weight with
which the Papal mantle presses on his shoulders who would keep it from
the mire. All other burdens seem like feathers to it. Ah me! but late
was my conversion; yet when I became Rome's Shepherd then I saw the
hollow cozenage of life; for my heart found no repose in that high
dignity, and yonder life on earth gave it no room to aim yet higher;
wherefore the love of this life rose within me. Till then was I a
wretched soul severed from God, enslaved to avarice, for which, thou
seest, I now bear the pain.'[71]
Most touching too are the entreaties of the souls in Purgatory for the
prayers of those on earth, or their confession that they have already
been lifted up by them. 'Tell my Giovanna to cry for me where the
innocent are heard,' says Nino to Dante;[72] and when the poet meets
his friend Forese, who had been dead but five years, in the highest
circle but one of Purgatory, whereas he would have expected him still
to be in exile at the mountain's base, he asks him to explain the
reason why he is there, and Forese answers, 'It is my Nella's broken
sobs that have brought me so soon to drink the sweet wormwood of
torment. Her devout prayers and sighs have drawn me from the place of
lingering, and freed me from the lower circles. My little widow, whom I
greatly loved, is all the dearer and more pleasing to God because her
goodness stands alone amid surrounding vice.'[73]
Surely it is a deep and holy truth, under whatever varying forms
succeeding ages may embody it, that the faithful love of a pure soul
does more than any other earthly power to hasten the passage of the
penitent through Purgatory. When under the load of self-reproach and
shame that weighs down our souls, we dare not look up to Heaven, dare
not look into our own hearts, dare not meet God, then the faithful
love of a pure soul can raise us up and teach us not to despair of
ourselves, can lift us on the wings of its prayer, can waft us on the
breath of its sobs, swiftly through the purifying anguish into the
blissful presence of God.
* * * * *
A feature of special beauty in the Purgatory is formed by the
allegorical or typical sculptures on the wall and floor of some of the
terraces, by the voices of warning or encouragement that sweep round
the mountain, and by the visions that from time to time visit the poet
himself. Let one of these visions suffice. Dante is about to enter the
circles in which the inordinate love of earthly things, with all vain
and vicious indulgence, is punished. 'In dream there came to me,' he
says, 'a woman with a stuttering tongue, and with distorted eyes, all
twisted on her feet, maimed in her hands, and sallow in her hue. I
gazed at her, and as the sun comforts the chilled limbs by the night
oppressed, so did my look give ease unto her speech, and straightway
righted her in every limb, and with love's colours touched her haggard
face. And when her speech was liberated thus, she sang so sweetly it
were dire pain to wrest attention from her. "I," she sang, "am that
sweet siren who lead astray the sailors in mid sea, so full am I of
sweetness to the ear. 'Twas I that drew Ulysses from his way with
longing for my song; and he on whom the custom of my voice has grown,
full rarely leaves me, so do I content him."' In the end this false
siren is exposed in all her foulness, and Dante turns from her in
loathing.[74]
Throughout Purgatory Dante is still led and instructed by Virgil. I
think there is nothing in the whole Comedy so pathetic as the passages
in which the fate of Virgil, to be cut off for ever from the light of
God, is contrasted with the hope of the souls in Purgatory. The
sweetness and beauty of Virgil's character as conceived by Dante grow
steadily upon us throughout this poem, until they make the
contemplation of his fate and the patient sadness with which he speaks
of it more heartrending than anything that we have heard or seen in
Hell. After this we hardly need to hear from Dante the direct
expression he subsequently gives of his passionate thirst to know the
meaning of so mysterious a decree as that which barred Heaven against
the unbaptised.
In Purgatory, Virgil and Dante meet the emancipated soul of the Roman
poet Statius, freed at last after many centuries of purifying pain, and
ready now to ascend to Heaven. Virgil asks him how he became a
Christian, and Statius refers him to his own words in one of the
Eclogues, regarded in those days as containing a prophecy of Christ.
'Thou,' says Statius, 'didst first guide me to Parnassus to drink in
its grottoes, and afterwards thou first didst light me unto God. When
thou didst sing, "The season is renewed, justice returns, and the first
age of man, and a new progeny descends from Heaven," thou wast as one
who, marching through the darkness of the night, carries the light
behind him, aiding not himself, but teaching those who follow him the
way. Through thee was I a poet, and through thee a Christian.' Not a
shade of envy, not a thought of resentment or rebellion, passes over
Virgil's heart as he hears that while saving others he could not save
himself.[75]
But now, without dwelling further on the episodes of the poem, we must
hasten to consider the most beautiful and profoundest of its closing
scenes.
Under Virgil's guidance Dante had traversed all the successive circles
of the mount of Purgatory. He stood at its summit, in the earthly
Paradise, the Garden of Eden which Eve had lost. There amid fairest
sights and sounds he was to meet the glorified Beatrice, and she was to
be his guide in Heaven as Virgil had been his guide in Hell and
Purgatory.
In any degree to understand what follows we must try to realise the
intimate blending of lofty abstract conceptions and passionate personal
emotions and reminiscences in Dante's thoughts of Beatrice.
This sweet and gentle type of womanhood, round whose earthly life the
genius and devotion of Dante have twined a wreath of the tenderest
poetry, the most romantic love, that ever rose from heart of man, had
been to him in life and death the vehicle and messenger of God's
highest grace. Round her memory clustered all the noblest purposes and
purest motives of his life, and in her spirit seemed to be reflected
the divinest truth, the loftiest wisdom, that the human soul could
comprehend. And so, making her objectively and in the scheme of the
universe what she had really been and was to him subjectively, he came
to regard her as the symbol of Divine philosophy as Virgil was the
symbol of human virtue and wisdom.
Touched by the glow of an ideal love, Dante had reached a deeper
knowledge, a fuller grace, than the wisdom of this world could teach or
gain. The doctors of the Church, the sweet singers, the mighty heroes,
the profound philosophers, who had instructed and supported him, had
none of them touched his life so deeply, had none of them led him so
far into the secret place of truth, had none of them brought him so
near to God, as that sweet child, that lovely maid, that pure woman,
who had given him his first and noblest ideal.
Now to Dante and to his age it was far from unnatural to erect concrete
human beings into abstract types or personifications. Leah and Rachel
are the active and the contemplative life respectively. Virgil, we have
seen, is human philosophy. Cato of Utica represents the triumph over
the carnal nature and the passions. And it is not only the Old
Testament and classical antiquity that furnish these types. The
celebrated Countess Matilda, who lived only about two centuries before
Dante himself, becomes in his poem, according to the generally received
interpretation, one of the attributes of God personified. And so
Beatrice became the personification of that heavenly wisdom, that true
knowledge of God, of which she had been the vehicle to Dante.
But to the poet and to the age in which he lived, it was impossible to
separate this heavenly wisdom in its simple, spiritual essence, from
the form which its exposition had received at the hands of the great
teachers of the Church. To them true spiritual wisdom, personal
experience and knowledge of God, were inseparable from _theology_. The
two united in the conception of Divine philosophy. Thus by a strange
but intelligible gradation Dante blended in his conception of Beatrice
two elements which seem to us the very extreme of incompatibility. She
is in the first place the personification of scholastic theology, with
all its subtle intricacy of pedantic method; she is in the second place
the maiden to whom Dante sang his songs of love in Florence, and whose
early death he wept disconsolate. And in the closing scenes of the
Purgatory these two conceptions are more intimately blended, perhaps,
than anywhere else in Dante's writings.
After wandering, as it were, in the forest of a bewildered life, the
poet is led through Hell and Purgatory until he stands face to face at
last with his own purest and loftiest ideal; and the fierceness of his
own self-accusation when thus confronted with Beatrice he expresses
under the form of reproaches which he lays upon _her_ lips, but which
we must retranslate into the reproachful utterances of his own tortured
heart, if we are to retain our gentle thoughts of Beatrice.
We need not dwell even for a moment on the gorgeous pageantry with
which Dante introduces and surrounds Beatrice. Suffice it to say that
she comes in a mystic car, which represents the Church, surrounded by
saints and angels.
No sooner does Dante see her, although closely veiled, than the might
of the old passion sweeps upon him, and like a child that flees in
terror to its mother, so does he turn to Virgil with the cry: 'Not one
drop of blood but trembles in my veins! I recognise the tokens of the
ancient flame.' But Virgil is gone. Dante has no refuge from his own
offended and reproachful ideal. As he bursts into lamentations at the
loss of Virgil's companionship, Beatrice sternly calls him back:
'Dante! weep not that Virgil has gone from thee. Thou hast a deeper
wound for which to weep.'
As one who speaks, but holds back words more burning than he utters, so
she stood. A clear stream flowed between her and Dante, and as she
began to renew her reproaches he cast down his eyes in shame upon the
water;--but there he saw himself! The angels sang a plaintive psalm,
and Dante knew that they were pleading for him more clearly than if
they had used directer words. Then the agony of shame and penitence
that Beatrice's reproof had frozen in his bosom, as when the icy north
wind freezes the snow amid the forests of the Apennine, was melted by
the angels' plea for him as snow by the breezes of the south, and
burst from him in a convulsion of sobs and tears.
How was it possible that he should have gone so far astray, have been
so false to the promise and the purpose of his early life, have abused
his own natural gifts and the superadded grace of heaven? How was it
possible that he should have let all the richness of his life run wild?
That after Beatrice had for a time sustained him and led him in the
true path with her sweet eyes, he should have turned away from her in
Heaven whom he had so loved on earth? How could he have followed the
false semblances of good that never hold their word? His visions and
his dreams of the ideal he was deserting had not sufficed, and so deep
had he sunk that nothing short of visiting the region of the damned
could save him from perdition. Why had he deserted his first purposes?
What obstacle had baffled or appalled him? What new charm had those
lower things of earth obtained to draw him to them? 'The false
enticements of the present things,' he sobbed, 'had led his feet aside,
soon as her countenance was hid.' But should not the decay of that
fair form have been itself the means of weaning him from things of
earth, that he might ne'er again be cheated by their beauty or drawn
aside by them from the pursuit of heavenly wisdom and of heavenly love?
When the fairest of all earthly things was mouldering in the dust,
should he not have freed himself from the entanglements of the less
beauteous things remaining?
To all these reproaches, urged by Beatrice, Dante had no reply. With
eyes rooted to the ground, filled with unutterable shame, like a child
repentant and confessing, longing to throw himself at his mother's
feet, but afraid to meet her glance while her lips still utter the
reproof, so Dante stood. From time to time a few broken words, which
needed the eye more than the ear to interpret them, dropped from his
lips like shafts from a bow that breaks with excess of strain as the
arrow is delivered.
At last Beatrice commanded him to look up. The wind uproots the oak
tree with less resistance than Dante felt ere he could turn his
downcast face to hers; but when he saw her, transcending her former
self more than her former self transcended others, his agony of
self-reproach and penitence was more than he could bear, and he fell
senseless to the ground.[76]
When he awoke he was already plunged in the waters of Lethe, which with
the companion stream of Eunoe would wash from his memory the shame and
misery of past unfaithfulness, would enable him, no longer crushed by
self-reproach, to ascend with the divine wisdom and purity of his own
ideal into the higher realms.
And here the Purgatory ends, the Paradise begins.