The necessary discipline is suddenly administered by the stem Cato, and the group hastens off in pursuit of more substantial goods, with Virgil very red of face.

The lesson on Love distinguishes natural, instinctive love from the intellectual love peculiar to man, and explains how the latter can err. The most ingenious feat, however, is the explanation of how the infliction of wrong on one’s neighbor, as it was spoken of in the Inferno, is really the pursuit of what appears to the distorted vision as a good. The discussion thus ends in a definition of the Capital Sins or Vices.

The third great lesson (XVIII) was directed against Christianity’s most dangerous domestic foes at the time, the Epicureans. Readers of the Inferno will remember how Epicurus is dealt a much harsher fate than the other Greek philosophers, and placed in the burning tombs of Canto X instead of in the pleasant, though hopeless, serenity of Limbo. An incredibly large proportion of Dante’s townsmen shared this materialist heresy which denied the immortality of the soul and man’s responsibility for his acts. The lesson is probably the most difficult in the whole Comedy. Having made the point that attraction toward a pleasurable stimulus is not necessarily a good, according to Epicurus, but merely a natural reaction, Dante must justify the concept of man’s being held responsible for simply following a natural impulse. To accomplish this, the principle of the Substantial Form must be explained, together with the concept of Pure Act versus Potentiality. To have done all this concisely, clearly, and with poetry intact is one of Dante’s greater achievements.

The last lesson of this general type is on human reproduction and the creation of the individual soul. It is introduced ingeniously by Dante’s supposed curiosity as to how incorporeal souls could still reflect so vividly and painfully the effects of tantalized hunger and thirst as are seen among the Gluttonous. From this starting point, and with the ostensible purpose of describing how, after death, memory, intellect, and will, stronger than before, impress on the surrounding air a fictive body with senses operative, Dante launches what is really a refutation of the other important heretical group of the day, the Averroists. Comparable to the Epicureans in numbers and influence, they shared with them a nonbelief in the immortality of the soul as an individual entity. They differed from them, however, in that the basis of their belief was what we might call today “scientific” rather than philosophical. The founder of the sect was a famed Arabian scholar who died about 1200, traditionally called Averroës, but known increasingly today as Ibn-Roschd. Physician as well as philosopher, he denied the existence of a conscious soul because he could find no organ or place for it in the body. His solution (simplified) to the obvious fact of man’s intellectual ability posited a universal intellect, with part of which the soul was endowed, and to which each share returned at death. For decades, Christendom floundered in refuting him, till Aquinas accomplished it with the argument of self-consciousness or awareness used by Dante (XXV, 67-75), who himself has often been accused of Averroism. In this canto, then, Dante has given the best current explanation of human generation, and has established the unity of the soul, the survival of its individuality, and its capacity to suffer the sort of punishment calculated to impress at least his contemporary readers.

It should be noted, in this connection, that Virgil no longer enjoys the position he had in the Inferno, where he appeared as the quasi-omniscient, unique purveyor of wisdom. This was fitting in such a predominantly pre-Christian realm, peopled almost exclusively by souls who had lost il bene dell’ intelletto, and where Virgil is the rescuer of one who had almost suffered that fate. As the poets emerge into the dawn light of the Purgatorio, the change is immediate and striking. The confident guide becomes another pilgrim; wise and experienced, however, he serves Dante and his readers as an example of the disciplined mind at work deducing the rules of this Christian territory. So, although Dante has him deliver the great central lectures on Love, the earlier one on Free Will versus Predestination is given (with characteristic irascibility) by one Marco Lombardo, whom we never see because of the dense smoke on the ledge of Anger. The last, in Canto XXV, Virgil graciously entrusts to Statius, a Latin poet a generation and more later than VirgiL Presented by Dante as the older poet’s ardent admirer, and a “crypto-Christian” through him, Statius represents a poet of the ancient, pagan world redeemed by the coming of Christ; the union of Empire with Christianity, of Cardinal Virtues with Theological Virtues. He is, thus, the obverse of Dante and his goal: the union of Christianity with the revived Empire, and of the Theological Virtues with the Cardinal Virtues to be restored under it. Artistically, he contributes a great new dramatic interest at a point where it is most welcome.

Quite apart from inevitable limitations of space, I have deliberately refrained from commenting on the poetry, the style, and (so far as possible) the unfolding story. I feel that everyone is entitled to make his own private initial approach to the intimate author-reader relation ship. Happily, in the Purgatorio as in the preceding cántica, Mr. Ciardi’s perceptive and sensitive translation makes that relationship more accessible than has hitherto been possible without a good command of the original Italian.

For matters not covered in the Introduction or in Mr. Ciardi’s tables and excellent notes, as well as for some thoughtful and imaginative interpretations, the reader is referred to the books listed below. The first two deal exclusively with the Purgatorio; the others contain other studies as well.

Fergusson, Francis. Dante’s Drama of the Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Stambler, Bernard. Dante’s Other World. New York: New York University Press, 1957.

Cosmo, Umberto.