In Purgatorio, singing is communal activity and points to the hope of a common salvation toward which the souls in Purgatory journey together. By contrast, the souls in Hell (as described in Dante’s Inferno) don’t sing—devoid of hope for redemption, these souls mostly lament in isolation.
For instance, when Dante encounters the souls in Purgatory who are being purged for gluttony, he notices that the souls are singing even as they cry: “And all these people, weeping as they sing, / because their gullets led them past all norms / are here remade as holy, thirsty hungering. / Cravings to eat and drink are fired in us / By perfumes from that fruit and from the spray [.]” Having overindulged themselves on earth, these souls are now subject to constant longing, as the food and drink they can smell around them only makes them hungrier and thirstier. This is obviously painful—and a clear reminder of their gluttonous, sinful pasts—which is why they’re understandably weeping. But their pain is purposeful, meant to cleanse or purge them of their sinfulness so that they’re able to ascend to Heaven. It is this hope for their salvation that spurs the souls to sing even in their suffering.
Likewise, newly arriving souls sing a Psalm in unison, and throughout Purgatory, each level has its own Psalm or hymn which penitents sing as part of the soul’s cleansing and training in virtue. That the souls in Purgatory sing together activity symbolizes the basic hopefulness that underpins Purgatory, that Heaven is within reach.
Music, Song, and Singing Quotes in Purgatorio
To race now over better waves, my ship
of mind – alive again – hoists sail, and leaves
behind its little keel the gulf that proved so cruel.
And I’ll sing, now, about that second realm
where human spirits purge themselves from stain,
becoming worthy to ascend to Heaven.
Here, too, dead poetry will rise again.
For now, you sacred Muses, I am yours.
So let Calliope, a little, play her part […]
Celestial, at the stern, the pilot stood –
beatitude, it seemed, inscribed on him –
and, ranged within, a hundred spirits more.
‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’:
they sang this all together, in one voice,
with all the psalm that’s written after this.
[…]
The crowd that now remained, it seemed, was strange,
astray there, wondering, looking all around,
as people do, assessing what is new.
Music, Song, and Singing Symbol Timeline in Purgatorio
