Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Purgatorio, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Purgatory and the Heavenward Journey
Love, Sin, and God
Free Will
Spiritual Power vs. Earthly Power
Time
Summary
Analysis
Having left Hell behind, Dante will now speak of Purgatory, the realm where souls cleanse themselves for Heaven. He invokes the Muses, specifically Calliope. After the darkness of the infernal realm, the blue skies above Purgatory refresh Dante. He is in the Southern Hemisphere, and he sees four stars that nobody else has ever seen, except for Adam and Eve.
It is dawn on Easter Sunday. According to Christian theology, the death and resurrection of Christ is what makes Heaven attainable to sinners, so it’s appropriate that this Cantica—whose characters are all ultimately bound for Heaven—opens on Easter morning. Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry, hence Dante’s invocation of her at the beginning of this Cantica. According to Dante’s geography, the Earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden, is located at the summit of Purgatory. In Dante’s mind, after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, nobody else lived in this Hemisphere. The stars symbolize the so-called cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude—virtues that pagans, uninformed by Christian grace, could practice.
Themes
Dante sees a respectable-looking, white-bearded old man, who asks Dante and Virgil what they’re doing here—have the laws changed, allowing inhabitants of Hell to enter Purgatory? Virgil nudges Dante to reverently kneel and explains to the man, Cato, that Beatrice’s prayers led him to guide Dante through the afterlife, even though Dante’s still living. Virgil adds that Dante seeks liberty, and that Cato knows the value of this, since he died for it himself. He promises that if Cato grants them entrance to Purgatory, he will pass along Cato’s greetings to his wife, Marcia, who lives, like Virgil, in Hell (Limbo, in particular).
Cato lived in the first century B.C.E. He is remembered for having committed suicide after the battle of Utica, rather than compromise his principles by coming to an agreement with his enemy, Julius Caesar. Dante views this suicide as a praiseworthy self-sacrificial act, hence Cato’s surprising presence in Purgatory rather than in Hell. (Besides, Cato was a pagan who seems not to have been held accountable to Christian teachings condemning suicide.) Dante’s favorable view of Cato also hints at his personal belief in political freedom.
Themes
Cato instructs Virgil to gird Dante with a reed belt and to wash Dante’s face. After Cato leaves, Virgil and Dante walk a little distance, and Virgil wets his hands in the dewy grass, then wipes Dante’s face, which is tear-stained and dirty from the journey through Hell. He also plucks a reed from the shore and places it around Dante’s waist. Another reed promptly shoots up in place of the first.
Dante’s face must be cleansed of the tears he shed while visiting Hell. This suggests that, unlike Hell, Purgatory is not a place of grief primarily, or of wallowing in one’s past sins, but of striving toward Heaven with hope.
Themes
