Purgatory: Canto X -- The First Cornice: The Proud

2005-02-26T06:20:00.000-08:00

Dr. Welch believes that hell is about hate in the sense that those who reside there have driven themselves to it by cultivating a state of being that has turned away from the good. Dante, as we know, views hell as an expression of divine love in context with the greater cosmos that seeks through love to place people according to their will -- either in the light of God or outside of it. These views are not incompatible with one another, and the idea that our torments continue in purgatory and are reminiscent of that through which we have earlier passed helps us to mark a difference between what we suffered in hell and what we endure on this mountain. The question that we're likely to be asking at this point is what is the nature of love -- how does it work as a tool, as an expression of our being, as an extension of ourselves in the world in relation to the power from which it is derived? Dante marks this conflict in the nature of love in La Vita Nuova as he pursues the idea of love's worth in advising him to throw himself upon the mercy of the object of his love: "the lordship of Love is good since he keeps the mind of his faithful servant away from all evil things" he ponders, and immediately afterwards reflects, "the lordship of Love is not good because the more fidelity his faithful one shows him, the heavier and more painful are the moments he must live through" (XIII, 2-3). In this, Dante suffers his own purgatory and does not yet understand that purgation ends in release. Two decades later, he's got it. Purgatory is a transitory state of being that ends in a beatific vision -- for that reason, what we suffer here is a journey toward the good, a stational procession, as it were. Of these two roads that have diverged in a wood, we're now, like Frost, taking the one less traveled by, and that makes all the difference.

Passing through the Gate, Dante knows not, unlike Lot's wife, to look back at the world behind him. From this point forth, he may only look forward to salvation and to a new life in God, for, as Pope writes, "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,/ Whose body Nature is, and God the soul" (Stanza IX, 267-8). After an arduous climb up to the first cornice (ledge), Dante and Virgil discover television (which makes Dante the real inventor of this concept) in the form of marble slabs against the cliff in which are carved figures "with such force and love,/ with such a living grace . . .,/ the image seemed about to speak and move" (34-6). As the poets are gazing upon these scenes of pride in check (the whip is always a model the souls are called to emulate while the rein (as we'll see) is always the model the souls are called to avoid), they turn to see the rocks moving of their own accord, like St. Porphyry of Gaza might have seen living among the troglodytes of paganism, and Dante pauses before addressing us, the reader, prompting us not to "think of the torments: think, I say,/ of what comes after them: think that at worst/ they cannot last beyond the Judgment Day" (106-8). Like Giles Corey who, in his refusal to answer questions at the Salem Witch Court in the fall of 1692, was pressed beneath rocks until he gasped, "More weight!" and expired with the next pebble, these penitent are pressed beneath boulders and crawl around the cornice bearing the weight of humanity's pride on their back. Unlike Giles Corey, they seem to groan, "I can bear no more!" (137).

S.

Purgatory: Canto X -- The First Cornice: The Whip of Pride

Purgatory: Canto X -- The First Cornice: The Proud