Tolstoy said it well

In reading Dante, one ought to know one is grappling with this:

"For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite"

Two kinds of infinity in Purgatorio 3

Reading Purgatorio 3, we found the canto brought into an interesting relation two radically distinct modes: the theoretical realm of intellect -- the solar sphere of signs and reading, associated by Virgil with Aristotle and the other noble Greeks and Romans in Limbo -- and the active realm of Manfred, where one blinding moment achieves something marvelous.

Is there some way to calibrate the relationship of these two distinct elements of the canto? It might help to see that while they can be said to be radically other, they do share one term.

Here is Virgil, on the madness of Reason that tries to bridge "the infinite way" of the ultimate mystery:

Matto è chi spera che nostra ragione
  possa trascorrer la infinita via
  che tiene una sustanza in tre persone.

Insane is he who hopeth that our reason
  Can traverse the illimitable way,
  Which the one Substance in three Persons follows!

And here is Manfred:

Orribil furon li peccati miei;
ma la bontà infinita ha sì gran braccia,
che prende ciò che si rivolge a lei.

Horrible my iniquities had been;
But Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms,
That it receives whatever turns to it.

Both speak of an infinite, but each seems to draw different inferences from his understanding of it. For Virgil, infinity is boundless, a spatial limitlessness that exceeds all powers of reason and its formal languages (such as mathematics) to subdue and make sense of. It dwarfs human aspiration, and all effort of the mind, however Faustian.

The infinity of Manfred's bontà is not a reference to size, or mathematical dimension. It is power, the power of the Good, figured in the Herculean image of "such ample arms" which can transcend any abyss, any moral distance between the corrupted soul and eternal bliss. Here infinity is precisely that which

possa trascorrer la infinita via . . . 

negating all privilege of meaning for the word "impossible."

The two parts of the canto, then, "meet" in the conceptual and dynamic space of infinite. Is this a meet or a miss? If Virgil, confronting the Mystery of the Trinity, feels the hopelessness of all who remain sospesi in Limbo sanze speme, Manfred would seem to answer him.

The juxtaposition of an Intellect that can conceive a limitless potential it can never grasp, on the one hand, with, on the other, Illimitable Goodness coupled with Infinite Power, would then seem equally to offer grounds for hope or despair. Manfred could prove the successful Palinurus who makes all the rest -- from the "real" Palinurus to Plato, Aristotle, Virgil and all the other Palinuri of pre-Christian epoch -- either types of incomprehensible loss, or candidates for incalculable gain.

The honesty of the Purgatorio lies in our being unable to decide the matter. The two parts of the canto lie tantalizingly near, yet remain in fact at an infinite distance. It is only through attempting to read their relation that we find it unresolved. This is remarkable in a poem in which all things appear to have been masterfully decided by an infinite creator. As such, it makes things more interesting for its readers.

Open road: Purgatorio 3 on reading

Corpo, the word for "body," appears four times in Purgatorio 3 -- more than in any other canto of the canticle, commentators note. (The word appears nine times in Paradiso 2.) The first half of this canto, with its play of light and shadow, has to do with sensory intelligence -- what later came to be called aesthetics, often elaborated in relation to our experience and judgment of perceptible form -- e.g., art and beauty.

At sunrise, Dante sees that he doesn't see Virgil's shadow, and leaps from that to the fear that Virgil has left him alone. This produces an ironic effect: Not seeing the figura of Virgil causes Dante to not see that Virgil is in fact right next to him, which Dante easily could have seen had he not been fixated on the level of figura.

On the narrative level, this can be seen as a cautionary tale about the differences between a sign and that which the sign stands for. If we remain just with the sign, as Casella's listeners did --

Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti

                 a le sue note;  
(2.118-19)

we face the possibility of never turning toward that which the sign stands for -- its meaning, or referent.

The introduction of aesthetics brings in its solar train a concern with signs, and thus with language and reading. The Purgatorio is making a "note" that has to do with reading, including the reading of the Purgatorio.

There's a sharp contrast here, in fact, with the mode we found in canto 3 of the Inferno. There we read the identical eternal text that Dante and Virgil encountered. The mouth of hell promised nothing -- to enter is to abandon hope -- it's a gate of no promise, no futurity, no meaning beyond its own self-referencing enunciation.

No such writing stands at the entrance to Purgatory; the only song we hear is soon disrupted. It's worth thinking about the writing that does appear further up the mountain: penitential "P's" are inscribed on Dante's forehead only to be erased, one at a time, as he spirals up the terraces. Here, even writing is not fixed.

Prof. John Freccero, who viewed Dante as profoundly in debt to St. Augustine, long ago noted that within the Augustinian view of reality, there is the human being, who is love; the only question is whether that love is directed toward self, or toward the other, on the way toward the Ultimate Other. If one loves fine dining, for example, this love stops at the meal, which ends up back in the self -- a form of self-idolatry. Love that is not idolatry doesn't fix upon every sign, every desire, every beautiful thing, but moves through all things seeking that in which all live, and move, and have their being. Such love by nature rises to its true home, as Beatrice will explain in the Paradiso.

Here at the base of Purgatorio, in the thick of his own shadow, the pilgrim receives a lesson in signs and reading. And Virgil, after composing himself, speaks in a most Augustinian way:

He's mad who hopes our intellect

can rapidly run that infinite way

kept by one Substance in three Persons.

Matto è chi spera che nostra ragione

possa trascorrer la infinita via

che tiene una sustanza in tre persone.  
(3.34-36)

The pathos here, as Virgil reflects upon the disiar . . . sanza frutto -- the "fruitless longing" of the greatest minds of antiquity -- is justly famous. As readers we now might want to ask how this concern with body, with signs, with reading and aesthetics relates to the unexpected appearance of Manfred and the tale he tells.