Purgatory: Canto IV -- Ante-Purgatory: The First Ledge

2005-02-20T00:30:00.000-08:00

All of us, even the indolent who appear not to care, have grace sufficient to participate in the life of God, and this is why even the late-repentent are ultimately characterized not so much by their tardiness but by their capacity for salvation. Any number of God's wonders might be the catalyst for our coming to realize this capacity; for Dante, it was his seeing that Beatrice could exist in the world. Dante's love for Beatrice was such a powerful presence in the way he structured his life that to avoid facing it head on, like a man who looks to the moon to get a glimpse of the sun's reflection, he felt it reasonable that he should change the perceived object of his affection lest he be blinded by her full glory in bringing upon him both her possible rejection and the imagined ridicule or embarassment of his community of friends and family. By feigning affection for someone else, then, Dante was dividing himself -- the outward manifestation did not match the inward, and this necessarily created multiple persons within him -- that which professed one thing yet yearned for another. While our Vita Nuovan canto measures the value of a divided personality, our Purgatorian canto insists on a unified one. It begins, in fact, with a realignment of priorities to bring back a single focus through Dante's refutation of the Platonic doctrine of multiple souls, and Ciardi intimates that this is significant since in La Vita Nuova, Dante was a follower of Plato.

Walking in this way, focused in conversation with Manfred on the idea that the living through their intercessory prayers can lessen the amount of time the dead will spend in Purgatory, Dante and Virgil come to a fissure in the cliff. They begin their ascent with Virgil in the lead and pull themselves agonizingly to the ledge of the indolent, those who made God wait because of their laziness and who now have to spend as much time on that ledge in death as they made God wait in life. Once there, Dante wonders about the placement of the sun and gets the full cosmography lesson from Virgil, who is very fluent in these matters and proves that in the 1310s, at least, almost two hundred years before Ferdinand and Isabella financed Columbus's voyage to the edge of the earth, there was credible scholarship about the earth's being round even though there's nothing in Virgil's language to indicate that there was an understanding about the earth's revolving around the sun instead of the sun's revolving around the earth. In fact, in Dante's cosmography, we'll see the earth is indeed the center of the cosmos as the other planets, including the sun, revolve around it.

Dan Colvin, Sun Mountain, 2000
In the middle of another theological point about how the first steps we take toward God are the most difficult (hence the sheerness of the cliff), Virgil is interrupted by the voice of Belacqua, a man noted for his laziness in everything, who must wait until he's given permission to continue his journey up the mountain. Belacqua, sluggard though he is, may have even more to atone for it on the cornice of sloth though prayers may help him, and while he doesn't ask Dante to bear back word for him (nor is he particularly interested in the fact that Dante is alive), we get the sense here in Purgatory that the penitents want to be remembered above for the practical value it has for their own progress while the damned had wanted to be remembered for the sake of the memory they had of mankind. A dichotomy presents itself, then, for on the one hand we know we have a mountain where those undergoing purification and reconciliation are able to choose when their atonement has ended and, on the other, a mountain strictly governed by fixed laws of ascent. Belacqua sees no point in attempting to move up the mountain until his time has come in which to do so, and while Pope writes that "Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,/ All but the page prescrib'd, their present state" those who have effectively entered heaven see quite clearly what that book entails. There is a sense of progress even among the indolent, and they have furthermore already done the math on their time remaining to be served. By way of solving the puzzle, then, that has presented itself in the free will vs. time-to-be served dichotomy, it may help to point to two things -- the first is that none of these penitents have passed through St. Peter's Gate, which means that they're not yet enduring a penitence for vices that dampened their virtues (they're waiting because they made God wait) -- the second is that they can move along faster if prayers are offered up to help them. If no one on earth remembers them as an active part of their community, then they feel it in the paucity of prayers offered in their direction. Perhaps it is for this reason that apparitions occur on earth such as that of Our Lady of Fatima that call us to a greater awareness of our proper responsibility to the greater human community of which we are a part so that we engage not only the living but also the dead in our prayers and prostrations. When Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto were suffering here, who is to say that the cause for which they were suffering didn't free a whole ledge of those who'd made the unfortunate choice to put off their walk with God until their last day. Of course, of these loafers and sleepers, the devil would ask, "Really, now, folks, is that our proper task?"

S.

Purgatory: Canto 4 -- The First Ledge

Purgatory: Canto IV -- Ante-Purgatory: The First Ledge