Reading as Viniculture: Purgatorio 4

Purgatorio 4 begins with an assertion about the nature of the soul based upon esperïenza vera; namely, that the soul is a single entity comprising parts, and when one part is concentrated upon one thing, another part is not free to do another thing independently. The experience in this case came from Dante's being so involved with Manfred that three hours passed without the poet's noting it.

As always, the text puts it to us to ask: What is this doing here? The task of reading stems from grappling with such questions, far more than from annotating references with learned footnotes. Each canto of this poem requires us to ask why certain seemingly disparate passages are juxtaposed. We should ask what these have to do with one another, and see whether we might find unity where before there seemed only a series of unrelated pieces. Unity of soul would seem at least to invite us to inquire into unity of text.

On a smaller scale, we encounter this very phenomenon in the passage that immediately follows the meditation upon the nature of the soul:

Maggiore aperta molte volte impruna
con una forcatella di sue spine
l'uom de la villa quando l'uva imbruna, 

che non era la calla onde salìne
lo duca mio, e io appresso, soli,

A greater opening ofttimes hedges up
  With but a little forkful of his thorns
  The villager, what time the grape imbrowns, 

Than was the passage-way through which ascended
  Only my Leader and myself behind him,

Robert Hollander calls this a "pseudo-simile" because it is not formally ordered with words such as "just as" . . . "so." By leaving out the comparative terms, one can argue that the passage puts into greater relief the juxtaposition of the farmer and God. If we then ask whether there is some larger relevance to the juxtaposition of architectural design of this hidden threshold of Purgatorio with the farmer plugging his hedge, it offers at least the prospect of reading the terms:

hedge :: solid rock
hole    :: nearly invisible fissure in rock
farmer :: God

The farmer is keeping out whichever thieves or creatures might steal his uva embrowning on the vine. To complete the comparison: so God has designed Purgatorio to be defended against anyone attempting to enter without divine authorization. The way in is not just hard to see, but very difficult to climb, as the next few lines make clear, as the poet struggles to keep up with Virgil, and asks somewhat pathetically how high the entire mountain is. 

What we've not yet involved in the comparison is the grape. This uom de la villa has a vineyard, where grapes are ripening before they are harvested, and transformed into wine.  

uva :: souls

With this, the rich figure of Purgatory as vineyard comes into view. Just as grapes growing in the wild might not survive predation, and certainly will not of their own doing turn into good wine, so the souls entering Purgatory have not the wherewithal to transform themselves. The work of purgation, as will be seen in the spiraling terraces from Pride to Lust, will be the labor of transformation from grape to wine. 

The fine thing Dante is doing here is inviting us to put this together for ourselves, using simple things we know from nature. As we do so, we participate in producing the poetry of the poem. To read is then to collaborate with the poet, or at least with the poem, to press it to yield its potency. (Reflecting on "wine" in the New Testament of course brings added "aroma.")

So the interrelation of the terms of the implicit comparison brings us a suggestive sense of what Purgatory might be: less charnel house or penitentiary, perhaps, than a protected spot of cultivation -- ripening, maturing, readying -- in preparation for a transformation to come. By interrelating, close reading turns into a sort of viniculture, with heady results. 

And, just as there is no wine without grapes, there can be no intellect without the vegetative and emotive parts of the soul. Seemingly disparate elements are parts of a greater whole. The initial tercets of canto 4 now seem quite relevant to the figure of wine making

The canto of course has further elements, including an overly elaborate dialogue on the track of the sun, and the delightful encounter with Belacqua. To read Dante is to pursue him.

Disorienting dawn: Early surprise in the Purgatorio

When Dante and Virgil return to the "chiaro mondo" from hell, they are on the shore of Purgatorio where Dante looks out at the waters where Ulysses drowned. The pilgrim had met the hero a short time before, and now has to ponder how he, a Florentine of no particular epic abilities, has managed to arrive where Ulysses, despite Herculean efforts, did not.

The poets have just climbed down the hairy trunk of Satan, turned at the vermo reo's pelvis, and climbed back to the surface of Earth. Not exactly the heroic setting for a poem of Homeric glory.

From the start, Purgatorio presents things that seem slightly "off." Instead of a triumphal arch, a handshake and a happy meal, there's a beach by trembling waters, simple rushes grow near the shore. An old man with fierce eyes looks back at you from beyond his own suicide.

Professor Mazzotta of Yale makes many fine points in his first lecture on Purgatorio, including the observation that normally in poems of renewal or rebirth, one meets a young person -- their youth betokens their role as emblems of new life. Dante gives us old man Cato -- who less fit to signal the beginning of new, burgeoning, hopeful life than one who ended his existence by force of will?

We soon meet Casella, who is still sufficiently in love with his songs to sing beautifully until Cato scolds him and his auditors into making better use of time. Here, unlike in Inferno and Paradiso, time is of the fabric of the place, and with time, change. But can newly saved souls, who have been ferried across the world by an angel, be so blasé? And if Casella is blasé, what of Belacqua in Purgatorio 4, who sits toadlike under a rock and mocks the efforts of Virgil and Dante to understand the science of what they are seeing?

The first thing to notice is how unexpected everything is. Where we thought we'd regained our bearings, we are thrown. Where's the glory of eternal life and the torments of penitence? Where are the solemn nuns, the flagellant monks, the incense-toting priests and breast-beating penitents that one would expect in a story about Purgatory? Cato? Casella? Manfred? Belacqua? What are these curmudgeons, aesthetes, rock star warriors and slackers doing here? Did we miss our exit?

It takes supreme confidence to do what Dante is doing here.

In the vestibule of Eternal Salvation, we are meeting oddly regular people, the sort we've all known. None of them have anything on Plato, Odysseus, Julius Caesar, or Virgil, all of whom are damned, while the likes of Belacqua and Casella are saved. Before we think we've got a handle on all this, the poet wants us to stew for a while. The poem is disorienting us -- it would be a disservice to rest assured that we know the way.