It's All About That Balance
Canto XVII of Purgatorio
Friends,
One of my favorite things about growing up in East Tennessee was our proximity to the Great Smoky Mountains. There were accessible entry points not far from my home in the foothills; between family adventures, Boy Scout activities, and church trips, I went hiking and camping a fair amount during my formative years. But even when I wasn’t actually in the mountains, I still appreciated their presence nearby. They were always just there, bearing witness to hundreds of millions of years of plate tectonics, soil erosion, and old-growth forest life. After college, when I moved away (to the flatness of the Prairie State, no less), I deeply missed the majestic beauty and legendary haze of the Smokies.
A similar image, albeit drawn from a different mountain range, is in view at the beginning of today’s canto. Dante-poet once again addresses us directly, asking us to try and use our imaginations to enter into the experience of the pilgrim (lines 1-9):
Remember, reader, if ever in the Alps
you were caught by a fog through which you saw
none otherwise than moles through their skin,
how, when the dense, moist vapors
begin to get thinner, the sphere
of the sun feebly passes through them,
then your imagination will be quick
to come and see how I first saw again
the sun, which was already in its bed.
Their sojourn up the first three terraces of Purgatory has taken Dante and Virgil an entire day, but as they reemerge from the thick smoke, they are granted a brief glimpse of the last rays of the sun setting over the sea. But Dante does not have the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful sight, because he is seized once again by fantastic visions, this time concerning examples of wrath. It is such a sudden shift that, while recalling it, he issues forth an apostrophe of wonder: “O imagination, which so steals us from outward things sometimes that we do not notice although a thousand trumpets sound around us, who moves you when the senses offer you nothing?” (13-16). Immediately answering his own rhetorical question, he declares, “A light that finds its form in Heaven moves you, by itself or by a will that guides it downward” (17-18). Then, having marveled at the imagination’s power, identified its source, and traced its trajectory, Dante describes the scenes (two from Roman myth and one from the Hebrew Bible). These arise unbidden, share their terrible wisdom, and then burst like a bubble.
The first image to appear is the gruesome tale (involving infanticide, fraud, and cannibalism) of Procne and Philomena, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The second vision, from the post-exilic book of Esther, is of the execution of the vengeful Haman on the same scaffold that he had built for the righteous Mordecai. The final scene, drawn from Virgil’s own epic, The Aeneid, shows Lavinia weeping for her mother Amata, who bitterly preferred suicide to seeing her daughter marry Aeneas. Amidst their various details, what these stories share in common is a vivid demonstration of wrath’s ultimate endgame: death and destruction.
For my part, I think I would prefer to see the sunset! These visions are powerful, yet once they have served their purpose, they are overcome and replaced by a far more brilliant light. The angel of the terrace arrives and, without even needing to be asked, directs Dante and Virgil to the place they can ascend. Its wing brushes off another P from Dante’s forehead (3 down, 4 to go!), and the parting Beatitude that he hears is, appropriately, Beati pacifici (“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God”). Farewell, terrace of wrath.
The final rays of the sun disappear below the horizon just as our protagonists reach the top step that leads to the fourth terrace. With the onset of nighttime, Purgatory’s mandatory moratorium on advancement kicks in. Against his will, Dante’s legs are forced to halt “just like a ship that has arrived at the beach” (78). So, trying to make the best of the situation, and noting that “although our feet stand still, your words need not” (84), he asks his guide what offense the fourth terrace is dedicated to purging. Virgil’s initial response, in a rather roundabout way, is sloth: “The love of the good, falling short of its duty, here is restored; here the badly slow oar carries on again” (85-87). Although commonly associated with laziness, the vice of sloth (accedia) is more precisely a matter of negligent apathy; it is a refusal to fully embrace goodness, a lack of love. Then, at the top of the stairs—and at the center of The Divine Comedy—Virgil launches into an impromptu lesson about love.
Here’s the gist of his disquisition, which incorporates ideas from Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas: Love is the reason why God created the universe, and all creation is suffused with his love. There are two types of love, natural (instinctive) and chosen (intellectual). The former always rings true, whereas the latter can sometimes go astray—whether by aiming at something evil or by aiming at a lesser good in the wrong way (pursuing it either too much or not enough). God is the Primal Good, who brings human love of all other goods into proper order. Indeed, virtue is a matter of rightly ordered love. Conversely, at their core, the vices are failures of love.
Virgil then comments on how this applies to the vices that are purged on the first three terraces, demonstrating how each is a distortion of love (115-123):
There are those who, through their neighbor’s abasement,
hope for supremacy, and only on this account
desire that his greatness be brought low;
There are those who, because another mounts higher
fear to lose power, favor, honor, or fame,
and thus are so aggrieved that they love the contrary;
And there are those who are outraged because of injury,
so that they make themselves greedy for revenge,
and thus they must seek out harm for others.
So pride, envy, and wrath are all examples of love being directed toward evil. Virgil then begins to pivot toward discussing the vices of the remaining terraces, which all involve love being directed toward a lesser good, but in a skewed way. Whether such love is deficient or excessive, it is out of balance.
But then, abruptly, Virgil cuts his speech short, saying, “I’ll be silent, so that you may seek it out for yourself” (139). Well, if Virgil says that’s enough for now, who am I to argue with him? We’ll resume with Purgatorio Canto 18 on Wednesday.
Yours on the journey,
Joshua
“Muzak” by Kevin Young (2003)
When old, do not let me bark
at passersby—let me be
like the slow motion, down-
the-street dog, ignoring
the cardinals, the colors
he cannot see, even us
as we tiptoe by—
Friend, please save me
from being the neighbors’
fool hound who woofs loud
at every grey squirrel, stray
noise, or lab rushing past
to meet some lady—from being
that cur who cannot help but howl
all night like newlyweds
keeping the world awake. O terrible
angel of the elevator, the plane,
insufferable unquiet we pray to, afraid—
Please make me mild
A rich conversation on the imagination, convened by a dear friend of mine