Summary
The figures who escorted the chariot now turn to it, singing, praising it in Latin, and throwing flowers towards it. And inside “that cloud of blossom,” a veiled lady steps down from the chariot: it is Beatrice. Dante is overwhelmed and turns to Virgil like “a child … running to his mamma,” but Virgil has disappeared, seemingly to begin his journey back to Limbo. Beatrice addresses him directly, telling him not to cry over Virgil’s leaving. Beatrice seems incensed, and she asks Dante how he could “dare approach the mountain?”
After a silence, Dante breaks into an outpouring of sighs and tears. Beatrice turns to the angels nearby to castigate Dante, explaining his sin: although she offered him the possibility of a new, virtuous life, he continued on “an untrue way, / pursuing those false images of good.” She continues, explaining that making “him see souls in perdition” was her last resort for his salvation. But now, she says, it is the time for the “payment” of his sins’ fees: “his penitence that shows itself in tears.”
Now addressing Dante directly, Beatrice turns “the point of her words” to him. She asks that he confess his sins, but Dante finds himself totally unable to speak. When he tries to say “yes” to her, it comes out without any sounds. His voice collapses like a bow laden “with too much tension,” and Beatrice asks what caused him to abandon hope. Dante confesses that “false delights” distracted him from the time of her death. Beatrice is glad at his blushing cheek but asks that he stop crying. She criticizes him for falling repeatedly into sin, and he stands silent “as children in their shame stand mute.”
Beatrice brings Dante’s attention upwards from the floor. Through tears, Dante watches Beatrice interact with the griffin, “the beast / that is one person in two natures.” Seeing Beatrice’s heavenly beauty, he faints. He wakes to the woman from earlier dragging him through the river; someone sings “Asperges me” (Latin for “sprinkle me”). The lady forces him to swallow the water, and Dante watches “four lovely ladies” dance; these are the four stars he saw at the beginning of the Purgatorio. They call his attention to Beatrice, who stares at the griffin and, at the four ladies’ request, unveils herself. “Heaven with its harmonies” are “reflected” in Beatrice when she does.
Dante is totally absorbed by the sight of Beatrice. Indeed, the four ladies cry that he is “‘Too fixed!’” on her. He is temporarily blinded, and Beatrice is not there when he regains sight. The chariot has been turned around and begun moving into the forest; Dante, Statius, and the woman follow. After much walking, Beatrice descends from the car. In front of them is a massive tree, “stripped of its leaves.” She tells the three that “This is how the seed of justice is preserved,” and they watch as the griffin grafts a shaft onto the tree; miraculously, life and color return to it.
Soon, Dante falls asleep. The woman wakes him, and Dante finds himself confused, wondering where Beatrice has gone. She turns his attention to her, sitting under the tree. She stands “as if left behind to guard the chariot,” when suddenly an eagle descends on the chariot. The car reels “like a ship tossed in a tempest,” and then a fox steals into it; Beatrice beats the fox back. The eagle swoops again and covers the chariot in feathers, then a dragon appears, shattering its bottom with its tail. The chariot sprouts heads, and Dante sees “a disheveled harlot” on top of it. A giant is next to her, and angry at her provocative glances, he hits and turns the chariot into the wood.
The three and four ladies join to sing mournfully about what has just happened. Dante compares Beatrice’s transformed face to Mary’s, and she speaks to the ladies in Latin, arranges them before her, and calls on Dante. She asks that he follow her “more closely” to hear her. She attempts to get him to ask her questions, but he is almost speechless. Noticing that he too is disturbed by what has just happened, she confides that someone soon will come to reestablish order in the world. She asks that he carefully mark down the details of her prophecy and attend particularly to the tree.
Though Dante remains largely unresponsive, he assures Beatrice that her words were heard; “my brain now bears Your stamp,” he says. He asks why he seems unable to understand her, and she says she will explain “the school that [Dante] has followed / and see if what it teaches follows well” her words. Dante says he cannot remember straying from “You,” evidence that the Lethe has caused him to forget his sins. They all come to a halt and see before them the Eunoë; we learn that the woman’s name is Matelda, and she follows Beatrice’s instructions as if Beatrice’s will were her own. Matelda takes Dante to the river to drink, and the Purgatorio ends, Dante says, because “all the sheets / made ready for this second canticle are full.” Dante is “remade… / renewed… / pure and prepared to rise up to the stars.”
Analysis
The first conversation between Beatrice and Dante is rife with character, intensity, and symbolism, and it serves as something of a climax for the Purgatorio. We can see here how Dante is actually able to use poetic devices like epic similes to further intensify the moment. The simile about the melting ice is a total of 14 lines from start to finish! This may seem long, but the overextended length of the simile actually works to replicate the build-up as the ice is about to melt and then finally does melt in a rush of water. This long build-up leading into a liquid outpouring almost perfectly mirrors the torrent of emotion Dante experiences in the simile, and even when Dante the pilgrim is at a loss for words, Dante the poet shows his skillful pen.
As Canto XXXI opens, we can see how Dante uses the imagery of weaponry (Beatrice’s “point” and Dante’s “bow”) to describe their interaction. In a reversal of typical gendered roles, it is Beatrice who wins this fight, and Dante who finds himself silenced. Indeed, it is absolutely important that the talkative Dante cannot speak in Beatrice’s presence; she is the focus, rather than his wit or speech. It is at this point when Dante can cross the river Lethe, and as such, be symbolically cleansed of sin. The final image of this canto picks up and develops the image of Divine Love or the Divine Good used by Virgil much earlier in the Purgatorio. When “Heaven with its harmonies” appears “reflected” in the eyes of Beatrice, not only does Dante suggest the beauty of music, but he also recalls the simile of the mirror Virgil used to explain how the good could be shared among all in Heaven.
The rejuvenation of the tree in Canto XXXII has a significant symbolic meaning. Given we take the griffin as a Jesus-like figure, we see him renew the life of the tree. This renewal is a recurrent motif in the Purgatorio, stretching back to the reed in the very first canto, but now the renewal is expanded in scope and tied specifically to the justice Dante cannot find in the world.
Yet, this rejuvenation is tempered by the destruction and theft of the chariot which follows it. This scene uses much of the imagery from the prophetic books of the Old Testament, like Isaiah or Jeremiah, as well as the book of Revelation. It repurposes it to create an allegory of the history of the Christian church stretching back over twelve centuries. Most importantly, the giant and the “harlot” seem to represent King Philip IV of France and the whore of Babylon. This was the period in which the papacy was temporarily moved to Avignon, France, removing it from Italy and further increasing the disastrous corruption Dante saw in church politics.
Some attention should be paid to reading closely the final stanza of the Purgatorio. Dante writes, “From those most holy waters / I came away remade, as are new plants / renewed with new-sprung leaves, / pure and prepared to rise up to the stars.” The alliteration and assonance in the passage is, of course, beautiful. But rather than simply be a pleasant sonic device, these repeated sounds emphasize the development Dante has gone through since the beginning of the Inferno. In the Italian, the prefix “ri” is repeated, suggested again and again the “re-newal” of his life; forms of new (novelle) are repeated multiple times as well. These condensed repetitions ensure that we realize Dante himself is once again new, having completed his Christian penitence.
