Purgatorio 2: No time for Orpheus

There is so much going on in each canto of the Commedia as to confound exposition. The Purgatorio can seem more straightforward. It's certainly less spectacular than either the Inferno or the Paradiso (at least until its climax), but the apparent simplicity is belied by the care with which Dante interweaves thematic motifs and suggestive allusions into the bare bones narrative.

Purgatorio 2 for example offers a simple "plot":  The new souls, fresh from the Angel-driven boat, ask Dante and Virgil which way to go. Virgil frankly tells them that he and his companion are just as new -- the band of newcomers then notices Dante's breathing, and stares hard at his face (viso)

as if forgetting to go and make themselves beautiful.
quasi obliando d'ire a farsi belle.

At this moment a shade breaks from the crowd seeking to embrace Dante, who tries to reciprocate, but Casella is a shade. When he speaks, Dante knows him, and a moment later Casella is singing a song he once composed with Dante's words. At this point Cato shouts at them,

Che e cio, spiriti lenti? 

What is this laggard spirits?

At which the souls including Dante and Virgil scatter like a flock of frightened doves.

One motif that clearly comes into play is that of deviant attention. The souls become fixated upon Dante's breathing - his presence as a living man arrests them. A moment later, they are all equally fixed upon Casella's song:

Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente  

ch'eran con lui parevan sì contenti,  

come a nessun toccasse altro la mente.

My master and I and those people
that were with Casella appeared so satisfied
as if no other thing touched our minds. 

In the most casual way, Dante introduces the motif of the enchantments of art -- of music and poetry, and continues the motif of surprise. The delight in the note of the song, and in Casella's voice, captures the attention of all who hear it, not unlike the creatures and even the trees that used to crowd around Orpheus.

Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti 

a le sue note

       We were all motionless and fixed upon
       his notes

Notice the wit of this poetic "performance": Casella recognizes his old friend, who is in fact, improbably, here in the afterlife in the flesh. It's the dream of Orpheus, except in reverse -- here it's the singer whose body eludes the vainly seeking arms. The song now is not an enchanting device to recall Eurydice from the dead, but the celebration of reunion with a loved one who is unexpectedly alive.

But such motionless attention to earthly things, no matter how beautiful, is out of place here. As Casella sings, he is performing an Orphic act -- recalling the plenitude of living fullness from the past. But here at ground zero of Purgatory, neither a return to some past good nor the stasis of mere aesthetic pleasure is what's called for. The song does not enchant Cato. By the time they reach the garden atop Purgatory, these souls will understand why the old man prods them into running.

The disorientation of the soul at the base of Purgatorio makes it possible for the sinners to err and to be corrected, not damned. The beauty they will make themselves (farsi belle) is not the narcissistic bellezza of artistic form -- as least as far as Cato is concerned. Broken from the poise of perfect aesthetic balance, they scatter like birds -- in contrast to the Angel who powered the boat that brought them there, and who wastes no time:

ed el sen gi, come venne, veloce.

and he took off as he had come - swiftly. 

This scattering dissonance will eventually chase these doves to a new kind of beauty.

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.