Purgatorio: Correcting Inversion
Dante and Virgil climb down Satan in the final act of inversion inside the cave. This is confronting sin itself. As they descend to the bottom of the cave, they end up beholding the stars once again. They finally ended up by going all the way down. The symbolism of stars in the Divine Comedy always resemble faith and hope. The ancient and medieval people always looked up for faith and inspiration. This was the realm of the gods or God where Man could not venture. Dante wastes no time giving us the perspective we need for the Purgatorio. He first compares his poem to a ship navigating a rough sea,
“To run o’er better waters hoists its sail, The little vessel of my genius now, That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel;And of that second kingdom will I sing, Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself, And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy.”
If you recall in our last article on Inferno, Dante encountered Ulysses in Hell who ended there by navigating towards the Mountain of Purgatory without the direction of God. His voyage was disrupted by a great sea storm causing Ulysses and his crew their unfortunate fate.2 The Church built their massive cathedrals to resemble Noah’s Ark. The early church viewed the Ark built by Noah as a symbol of the Church guiding the faithful through the tumultuous seas of sin and violence. The theme of the voyage is an interpretive key to understanding the Purgatorio. Another key is just a few lines later,
“That beauteous planet, that to love incites, Was making all the orient to laugh, Veiling the Fishes that were in her escort.To the right hand I turned, and fixed my mind Upon the other pole, and saw four stars, Ne’er seen before save by the primal people.”
The “beauteous planet” is Venus. In pagan mythology, Venus is the goddess of love. Venus will represent the journey of love that Dante will undergo as he ascends the Mountain of Purgatory. We have the poem as a ship navigating the sea of sin with Venus serving as a compass. What else does Dante need? He makes note of these four stars in the lines above. The four stars represent the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice & fortitude. These virtues are only virtuous in light of the love that Venus provides. This harks back to a biblical passage written by the Apostle John in his letters to the Christian community. The “beloved disciple” had a theological vision for love itself. He writes,
“Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.”4