Purgatorio (82 page)
Authors: Dante
61–66.
Virgil’s explanation of the position of the sun in the morning sky may be paraphrased as follows: If the sun (the mirror), which moves from one side of the equator to the other, were in the constellation Gemini (Castor and Pollux, the celestial twins) and not Aries (where it is now—see
Inf
. I.37–40), Dante would see the sun’s path (the red part of the zodiac) as close to the Bears (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) and thus as far north as it ever gets (at the summer solstice, 21 June). It would do this, Virgil adds, in an apparently gratuitous detail (but see the next passage), unless it were to veer from its ordained path (which of course it will not in any normal expectation).
“Zodiac, a belt of the heavens eighteen degrees in breadth, extending nine degrees on either side of the Ecliptic, within which, according to the Ptolemaic system, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn perform their annual revolutions. It is divided into twelve equal parts of thirty degrees, called signs, which are named from the constellations lying within them”
(T)
.
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67–75.
Having made this much clear, Virgil goes on to offer Dante a “thought experiment” that in fact exactly replicates what was, in Dante’s time, considered geographical actuality. For Dante, Jerusalem, upon the hill Zion, and the mount of purgatory are precisely antipodal and share a common horizon (the equator). From this “experiment” it quickly becomes clear that the path of the sun (the “highway” that Phaeton flew off when he lost control of the chariot of the sun—see note to
Inf.
XVII.106–108) must pass beneath (south) of Jerusalem and (in once more northcentric thinking), above (north) of the mount of purgatory. And thus we understand why Dante was surprised at the sun’s leftness and why he should not have been.
The reference to Phaeton, now making clear the reason for the inclusion of reference to the possibility of the sun’s
not
keeping its ordained path, is part of a “Phaeton program” in the poem (see Brow.1984.1). As Brownlee points out, Phaeton’s presumptuous and failed heavenly voyage is set against Dante’s ordained and successful voyage to the otherworld.
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76–82.
The protagonist’s rephrasing of what he has learned from Virgil is, one must admit, easier to grasp quickly than the master’s presentation of it.
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83–84.
The Hebrews used to see it from Jerusalem but do so no longer because of their diaspora.
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85–87.
It is interesting that, in a canto in which the primary new character is the extremely lazy Belacqua, the protagonist is so strongly presented as wanting to rest—perhaps more so than in any other part of the poem (but see
Inf
. XXIV.43–45).
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98–99.
The voice that breaks into what has by now become, for most readers, a rather labored and even fussily academic discussion will turn out to be that of Belacqua. Named only at verse 123, he was a “Florentine, contemporary of Dante, said by the old commentators to have been a musical instrument-maker; modern research has suggested his identification with one Duccio di Bonavia”
(T)
. According to Debenedetti (Debe.1906.1), Belacqua was dead before March 1302 but still alive in 1299. In other words, like Casella, he would seem to have been, in Dante’s mind, a recent arrival.
His ironic and witty response to the conversation he has overheard immediately wins the reader’s affection. (But, for a denial that this speech of Belacqua’s is in fact ironic, see Petrocchi [Petr.1969.1], pp. 270–71.) For a moment we feel drawn out of the moralizing concerns and serious tones of the two poets. Manica (Mani.2000.1), p. 35, calls attention to the great importance of Dante’s Belacqua to Samuel Beckett’s fiction. According to him, Belacqua becomes a contemporary myth of irony rather than a depiction of the loss of will; however, he may not sense how much of the Beckettian view of Belacqua is already present in Dante. Much of Beckett’s work is a kind of rewriting of the Dantean universe from the point of view of Belacqua alone, a universe of waiting, boredom, question, and frustration, as in the early short story “Belacqua and the Lobster” and certainly including the rock-snuggled hoboes of
Waiting for Godot
. For at least a moment in this extraordinary exchange, Dante’s Belacqua seems to control the situation. Of course he will have to be swept aside in the name of progress toward a Christian goal. But it is astounding (and heartwarming) to see how greatly Dante empathized with this character we like to imagine as being so antipathetic to him.
His first word, “perhaps,” immediately reveals his character as being indecisive, at least where goals or noble purposes are concerned; what follows shows his wit, deftly puncturing the balloon of Dantean eagerness (for he is a man who longs to do some serious sitting—see verse 52, where he accomplishes that goal). As we shall see, Dante will fight back, and we will then have a scene that is reminiscent of the back-and-forth between Farinata and Dante in
Inferno
X.
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105–111.
The word
negghienza
(indolence) begins a steady run of words expressing a desire not to do:
lasso
(weary—106),
sedeva
(was sitting—107),
negligente
(indolent—110),
pigrizia
(sloth—111). The words express the point of view of the protagonist, undoubtedly buoyed by his own recent enthusiasm for spiritual mountaineering, if perhaps conveniently forgetting his recent fatigue—of which Belacqua will enjoy reminding him. Dante has now returned Belacqua’s delicate barb with a rather hefty blow.
The
tenzone
-like tone (see note to
Inf
. VIII.31–39) of jesting rivalry that marks the rest of this scene may have been previously set in real life. A tale has come down to us, first found in Benvenuto’s commentary (1380), yet almost always cited by later commentators only from the Anonimo Fiorentino’s more pleasing account (1400). According to him, Dante frequently reproached Belacqua for his sloth. One day Belacqua quoted Aristotle (the seventh chapter of the
Physics
, a passage also found in
Monarchia
I.iv.2): “The soul becomes wise when one is seated and quiet.” To this Dante supposedly replied: “If sitting can make a man wise, no one is wiser than you.”
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115–117.
Rather than what we might expect, a counterthrust from Dante, we receive the information that he now, with brotherly affection, recognizes this saved soul and approaches him, despite the physical distress he still feels from that energetic climb of his.
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121.
The poet’s summarizing phrase puts his technique of presentation of Belacqua into relief: lazy movements and curt speech. In fact, Belacqua’s three laconic speeches spread over only five lines (98–99, 114, 119–120), and not even the full extent of these. They make him out, as Dante almost certainly knew him, a familiar figure: a person of little physical energy and of incisive, biting wit.
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122–123.
Dante’s sympathy now governs the mood of the rest of the scene and puts an end to the aggressive sallies of the finally named Belacqua.
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124–126.
Dante’s last question is not without its barb; is Belacqua just being himself? Has nothing in him changed even in this state of grace?
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127–135
. In what seems surprising length for so laconic a speaker (first three speeches, five lines; final speech, nine lines), Belacqua now reveals his other side, not that of a keen listener waiting for his “opponent” to fall into the net of his sharp wit, but of a lazy loser who can’t quite get himself organized. It is, the more we reflect upon it, something of a miracle that God chose him to join the elect in Heaven (as the protagonist himself thought—see vv. 123–124).
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127.
Belacqua’s word of greeting, “frate,” now used for the first time since we heard Ulysses—if with far different purpose (see note to
Inf.
XXVI.124–126)—address his men as his “brothers” (
Inf.
XXVI.112), establishes the bond of genuine community among the saved, and we shall hear it used to address one’s fellow twelve more times in
Purgatorio
and five in
Paradiso
.
For an observation regarding the antithetic relationship between Belacqua and Ulysses see Frankel (Fran.1989.1), pp. 125–26.
Does it seem that Belacqua does not realize that Dante is still in the flesh, merely assuming that he and Virgil are headed up the mountain to purge themselves? It is possible to ask this question because, in this exchange, there is no reference to Dante’s condition or to the identity or role of Virgil, subjects that have and will come up in other colloquies on the mountain.
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130–131.
Where Manfred and his flock were eager to move on to their punishment and probably have far longer to wait, Belacqua exhibits a slothful hesitance even to consider shortening his time here. As the first of the late-repentant, he here establishes the rule that applies to all whom we meet in the remainder of ante-purgatory, that is, all between Cantos IV and VIII: there is a prescribed time of waiting for these former sinners, an equal amount to that which they spent unrepentant for their sins.
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132.
Even his way of describing his last prayer, which in his view saved his soul, invokes a sense of laziness: it is composed, not of words, but of sighs, a lazy man’s prayer if ever there was one.
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133–135.
Acknowledging that other “law” of ante-purgatory, of which we have heard from Manfred in the last canto (vv. 138–141), Belacqua refers to the possibility that the sentences of the late-repentant, like those of the excommunicate, may be shortened by the prayers of the living. His way of phrasing the possibility makes us tend to agree with him that he will do the full term of his sentence, since it seems to him unlikely that any of
his
friends would seem to be possessed of “a heart that lives in grace.” His speech trails off in dubiety; we reflect that his last negative words do not contain an appeal to Dante for help with the prayers of the living. It is no wonder that Beckett admired him so. He is the sole “Beckettian” character occupying a place in the purposeful and harmonious world of purgation and salvation.
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136–139.
Virgil has had enough of this, perhaps revealing, in his stern tone, his own sense of the injustice of the salvation of the apparently undeserving Belacqua. His urgent summons to recommence the journey upward, abruptly terminating Dante’s conversation with Belacqua before its formal conclusion (as Carroll [1904] observed), ends the canto with a note of timeliness that the episode has disrupted. Belacqua, saved, has all the time in the world; Virgil, damned, does not. Life, or grace, does not always seem fair.
It is now noon in purgatory and 6
PM
in Morocco, across from Spain at Gibraltar. Since
Purgatorio
II.1–9, when it was dawn, the action on the mountain has consumed six hours (we learned that it was just after 9
AM
at
Purg.
IV.15–16), just over two and a half of them spent in the difficult ascent and the meeting with Belacqua.
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1–3.
The canto begins with the protagonist’s forward and upward propulsion but quickly reverses its sense of moral direction when Dante glances back, hearing the voice of one of the negligent behind him.
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4–6.
Singleton (1973) argues that, because when Dante approached these late-repentant souls in the previous canto the sun was before him (IV.101), his shadow now fell behind him and, for this reason (or because, as Grabher [1934] noted, in the shade of the boulder he was out of the sun), was not observed by the onlookers until now when, moving away from them, he cast a shadow at an oblique angle. The sun was to Dante’s left when he turned back toward the east (IV.52–57); now as he heads west it is to his right, casting his shadow to his left. (For the various moments in this
cantica
in which Dante’s shadow is remarked upon, see note to
Purg
. III.16–18.)
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