I've just finished reading The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory by Dante Alighieri (Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers) and I want to write my thoughts about it down like I did in the past with The Inferno.#

The Purgatorio is very different from the Inferno in that it focuses more on ideas and deep meaning as opposed to the detail and mythology of the Inferno. Dorothy talks about how many people view it in the opening pages of the Introduction of the book.#

There is another reason why we may not approve of what Dante is doing in the Purgatory - a reason succinctly phrased by one critic in the poignant cry: "Then the sermons begin." There are long passages which can only be classed as didactic poetry - versified statements of plain theological or scientific fact; these are more numerous in the Purgatorio than in the Inferno, and still more numerous in the Paradiso. The inhabitants of hell are not remarkable for any great interest in morals or divinity - naturally enough, since they have "lost the good of the intellect"; the pass their eternity in a bustle of purposeless activity and have no use for thinking. And since there are twenty-four circles to be hastened through, over a very rough road amid a perpetual and distracting clamour, Dante and Virgil themselves have but little leisure for improving conversation. This, after all, is as it should be. It is not while undergoing the foretaste of damnation that one can engage in abstract speculation; it is much if one can endure and come through unscathed. Only when one has squeezed out from Hell's suffocating bottle-neck to "look once more upon the stars" can the mind resume its discursive and contemplative functions, and the vast intellectual movement of the Commedia begin to be unfolded in direct speech with a figure. [pg. 11]

I think this is a very accurate characterization of what happens on Mount Purgatory and it was important to know this up front so I could pay more careful attention to what was being said while on the Mount. The Divine Comedy is more than an adventure through Hell and Heaven to find a lost love, it makes you wonder about the nature of those places and how to better live on Earth.

A major problem that Dorothy says that Dante must have faced was in organizing Purgatory and making sure it was not too symmetric to Hell. That it was not so repetitious to the point of inflicting boredom. Of course it has to be slightly similar as they are both concerned with the same Sins. Dante succeeds in this by his categorization and understanding of the two places' nature.#

It has the further great advantage that the use of two distinct systems of classification emphasizes the essential distinction between Hell and Purgatory: in the former, acts of sin produce their cumulative effects, the soul remaining at the lowest point of degradation to which it has unrepentantly willed to descend; in the later, the stain of sinfulness is cleansed, the penitent soul shedding off successively all those imperfections which cling to it against its better will. Hell is concerned with the fruits, but Purgatory with the roots, of sin.

In any case, whether the arrangement of the Inferno as we have it was the offspring of first or second thoughts, we are still brought up against the problem with which we started; the Purgatorio must again exhibit souls who are suffering the penalty for sin, and the poet must somehow contrive to avoid a mere repetition of his effects. [pg. 15]

This was the first inkling for me about the difference between Hell and Purgatory... although they seem on the surface to be very similar (the nature of the punishments are the same) there is something very different about them. The souls in Hell have essentially given up, although they don't feel that they've given up because they are where they want to be. And the souls in Purgatory are still on the quest for repentance because they are not satisfied with the temptations and imperfects that still lie inside them. One is eternal and distraught, and the other is temporal and filled with hope of someday-salvation.

It has been well said by a great saint [St. Catherine of Genoa] that the fire of Hell is simply the light of God as experienced by those who reject it; to those, that is, who hold fast to their darling illusion of sin, the burning reality of holiness is a thing unbearable. To the penitent, that reality is a torment so long and only so long as any vestige of illusion remains to hamper their assent to it: they welcome the torment, as a sick man welcomes the pains of surgery, in order that the last crippling illusion may be burned away. The whole operation of Purgatory is directed to the freeing of the judgment and the will. Hell is the fleeing deeper into the iron-bound prison of the self - for the damned also, after their manner, seek their own torment. [pg. 16]

And said again elsewhere in reference to how the toils of Purgatory cannot be understand by any soul in Hell because they are a state of mind:

That is the mark of Purgatory, the thing which Hell cannot understand, and which turns to folly earth's fumbling attempts to discriminate between retributive and remedial punishment. Their desire is turned to the torment as aforetime to the sin; the suffer no coercion but their own unwavering will: "my heart is fixed, O Lord, my heart is fixed." [pg. 21]

One of my favourite parts of the Commedia as I've so far read is how Beatrice is the perhaps the one thing that keeps Dante going when he is faced with a wall of Fire or a ride on a demon's back. Without ever hearing here described before the final Cantos of the Purgatorio you have the intense feeling that she is beyond beautiful.#

And there, beneath her veil, beyond the stream,
Her former self, methought, she more outshone
Than here, with others, she once outshone them

Her unveiled beauty passes the wits of poets to communicate; and as it rises from sphere to sphere of Heaven it glows with an ever more radiant splendour. So Dante says: if he says it, it is because he means us to believe it, and our refusal does him no honour. [pg. 29]

I think that we all have our own Beatrice, the one for whom the Sun rises each day to compete with bringing it's sun rises and sun sets to challenge and forever being defeated by the slight smile that grows across her face when your eyes meet. You know who mine is. Who's yours?

Dorothy talks a great deal in the introduction about the nature of Dante's Love for Beatrice and how it enters into his philosophy of the Divine, whether he seeming "worship" interferes with his beliefs.#

We must come, then, to Beatrice with an open mind, prepared to see what the poet chooses to show, and to accept as his "real" intention that which he has backed with the whole power of his art, and the labour of a lifetime. Of all the loves he had known - [...] and he had known love in many kinds [...] - this is the one which, with will and judgement assenting, he declares to be a revelation of divine truth. [...] It is a love who joy - and therefore its fulfillment - consists in the worshipful contemplation of that which stands over and above the worshipper. True to its origins in courtly love, it finds its entire happiness in being allowed to do homage to its acknowledged superior. [pg. 43]

This seems to be similar to the opinion that I have grown that the truest form of Love is the unveiling of Truth and the realization that happiness lies within sharing happiness and homage with the center of your Truth and Love.

The Beatific Vision is the eternalizing of that moment in the contemplation of that Perfection beyond which nothing greater can be conceived for desiring. [pg. 44]

So before we impart into Purgatory, remember that the purpose of Purgatory is to improve the soul so that it is deserving of the privilege to share in the Divine Love and Truth that awaits it in Paradise. It is the process that the soul goes through to properly give homage to its Love, because muddy hands cannot clean and care at the side of the pristine.#

So long as there remains in the soul the least trace of consent to sin, this clouding and coarsening remain to fetter the will and judgement. Only when the clear sight and tender conscience are restored is the soul set free to stand before the unveiled light of the presence of God, which otherwise it could not endure. It is this which underlies Dante's great statement, that when the soul feels itself free, it is free. Purgatory is not a system of Divine book-keeping - so many years for so much sin - but a process of spiritual improvement which is completed precisely when it is complete. "God is satisfied when we are satisfied." [pg. 58]

And secondly, that the heart of everything that Man is capable of is Love, the gift imparted by God.

His argument rests upon the great Augustinian premiss that evil in itself is nothing and can originate nothing positive - not even sin. It can only be a parasite upon the good which God has created. Man has a natural impulse to love that which pleases him. This impulse, which is the root of all virtue, can be perverted, weakened, or misdirected to become the root of all sin. Thus, all the Capital Sins are shown to derive from love for some good, either falsely perceived, or inadequately or excessively pursued. [pg. 66]