Purgatory: Canto 30 -- Beatrice

2005-03-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

For those of you who guessed and failed at the origin of the smoke on the third cornice, it was rising out of a flue attached to an oven within a crematorium inside of which was the body of my father, Phillip, who died on May 10, 2004. The body was burned, at his request, on the 13th of the month, exactly five months before his grandson, Alexander, was born, and his ashes were distributed (rather than scattered) in seven urns, one of which sits in the home of each of his children, whom he used to sing to sleep every night with his favorite songs -- Terry Jacks' Seasons in the Sun and Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger. Odd though they were as bedtime songs, since both of them deal with loss through death, they are meaningful to my memory of he who was my light and reason in everything I knew and loved. I know how Dante feels to have lost Virgil and, though grace accompany him, to realize that every step taken thenceforth is one further away from the ground on which stood his revered father. Time is about to lose meaning for us, for there is none, really, in heaven, and though we know that the steps we take towards it are actually steps into the past of our ancestors (after all, a place with no time means we all arrive there at once -- all those who came before and who will come after), there's still a measure of distance during which we must realize we are on our own. Perhaps I'll look upon this some millennia hence and finding my father at my side point out the lone footprints in the sand only to have him add, like our Father in heaven, that "at that point, I began carrying you."

What we discover of this triumphant parade is that its purpose is to provide a chariot for Beatrice, who steps out from it as the Bride from Lebanon, the homeland of my fathers, and in fulfillment of Dante's vision of her in his La Vita Nuova, where he writes in Canto 39, "Alas! By the full force of countless sighs born of the thoughts that overflow my heart, the eyes are vanquished, and they do not dare to return the glance of anyone who sees them." At the very instant that Dante recognizes Beatrice, he turns to Virgil for support and finds that Virgil is no longer with him. To have achieved the goal of his journey and have lost the companion of it all in the same instant is too much for Dante to bear. He weeps and is instantly reproved by Beatrice for doing so. She asks, "How dared you make your way to this high mountain?" and not even the angels who intercede on his behalf in their singing, "In you, Lord, I have hope!" can calm her wrath, for she tells them to mind their own business until Dante "may understand/ and feel a grief to match his guilt" (107-8). It's not just his grief that she's after, but she's also after his wasted talent (the very thing for which he has had so much pride -- she practically says here that he hasn't used it enough to have such pride in it). Dante had apparently not loved her enough in the way that he should have, having allowed himself to be tempted by that woman with the compassionate eyes and having even flirted with the idea of . . . letting go her memory! And here we find her reasons for sending Virgil to him -- a Virgil for whom she no longer cares now that he's delivered Dante to her -- as she continues, "He fell so far from every hope of bliss/ that every means of saving him had failed/ except to let him see the damned" (136-8). Furthermore, until Dante castrates himself (I mean, prostrates himself) in true penitence brought by the full understanding of his remissions, it would destroy heaven for him to enter so unprepared! With her 42 line tirade, you'd think that Dante was St. Cyril being accused of denying the divinity of Christ. How's that for a welcome for a man who's been through hell for a woman?

S.

Purgatory: Canto 30 -- Virgil's Departure

Purgatory: Canto 30 -- Beatrice