Notes

Dante is now entering purgatory. He can see the blue skies. He invokes the Muses, specifically Calliope. Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry, hence Dante’s invocation of her at the beginning of this Cantica. 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.
Virgil cleans Dante's face and ties a reed (representing humility) around his waist.
It is now sunrise, and Dante walks along the shore and see a bright glowing ship piloted by an angel carrying spirits.
They ask Virgil and Dante for directions to Mount Purgatory, but Virgil explains that they, too, are pilgrims. Awed, the souls notice that Dante is still living, and one figure steps forward from the crowd to embrace him. Dante realizes it is his friend Casella and asks Casella to sing one of the love songs he used to compose to soothe Dante’s weariness. Casella does, to everyone’s enjoyment. As the group stands still, Cato returns and scolds them all for loitering. The souls scatter like a flock of startled birds.

As Dante and Virgil continue on their way, Dante is puzzled by Virgil’s lack of a shadow. Virgil tells Dante that it’s foolish to try to fully grasp God’s doings with one’s rational mind; Dante must content himself with the fact that something is the case, not why it is the case. Virgil reminds Dante that Plato and Aristotle must spend eternity in Hell with an unsatisfied thirst for knowledge. Repentant excommunicates must stay in Purgatory for 30 times the span of years that they separated themselves from the Church while living.

On this second terrace of Purgatory, Dante finds those, like Belacqua, who remained within the Church’s fold but who nevertheless delayed repentance for their sins until the last possible moment of life—in this case, out of sheer laziness and procrastination. They’re now forced to remain idle for the length of time they initially delayed. They come across a group of souls chanting the Miserere, but, noticing Dante’s shadow, the curious penitents are distracted from their prayers. They flock to him, calling out questions. They are all, the souls explain, victims of violent deaths, who died repentant but without the benefit of a final confession. Sordello explains that there’s no fixed path and adds that no one is permitted to climb overnight—it’s a law of Mount Purgatory.
They take refuge in a valley of flowers and aroma and sight souls: Emperor Rudolph, the prince Ottakar, and England’s King Henry. These figures are in Purgatory because, during life, they were too preoccupied with worldly matters to attend to their souls.
The group gazes expectantly skyward. Soon, two sword-bearing angels descend; the points of their swords are broken, and they wear bright green garments. Sordello explains that these guardian angels descend nightly to protect the penitents from a snake that always passes through the valley. Virgil points out to Dante that the four stars they saw that morning have set, and three other stars have risen in their place.

Waking, he finds that it’s morning, and that he and Virgil have been carried to the portal of Purgatory proper. A lady named Lucia carried Dante, Virgil explains, while he followed behind. The two approach a gate in Purgatory’s outer wall; before it, an angel sits on the stair, holding a blindingly bright sword. After Virgil explains that Beatrice has sent them on this journey, the angel welcomes them to enter. Beating his breast in a sign of penitence, Dante falls before the angel and asks to be admitted. Before letting Dante in, the angel writes seven “P”s on Dante’s brow with his sword-point.

FIRST TERRACE - PRIDE
Dante and Virgil notice humanlike forms moving toward them, but their appearance is strange, as they are bent almost to the ground. Dante realizes that these are souls doing penance for the sin of pride. Each soul is bearing a stone, its heaviness matching the weight of his or her sin. The prideful penitents pray the Our Father, or the Lord’s Prayer (submission to the lord). As they conclude the prayer, the sinners observe that they pray not for themselves, for they don’t need it anymore; rather, they pray for those remaining on earth.

SECOND TERRACE - ENVY
A little further ahead, Dante sees a group of souls dressed in drab cloaks. As he gets closer, he sheds tears of pity, seeing that not only are these figures dressed in rough hair shirts and leaning on one another for support, but that their eyes are sewn shut with wires. They wear sackcloths, a sign of regret. They stared and envied the goods of others and thus have their eyes sown shut - they are to be taught generosity. As the two figures move on, Dante and Virgil hear the voices in the air reciting examples of envy, like Cain slaying his brother Abel and Aglauros being turned to stone.

Virgil explains that human beings see sharing as a reduction of what each individual gets. But this isn’t the way that a loving soul should think. Rather, such a soul sees mutual possession as increasing each one’s good. Though Dante remains puzzled, Virgil promises that Dante will understand better once they’ve met Beatrice above. They press onward. This section contains Virgil’s first discourse on love. He touches on the ideas of sharing and reciprocity, which are things that Dante is not yet sufficiently cleansed of his own sin to understand. Dante’s will (and the human will, more generally) must be shaped so as to understand higher spiritual truths, which is why Virgil says Dante will understand better once they ascend to where Beatrice is.

THIRD TERRACE - WRATH
The smoke on this level of Purgatory symbolizes the way that wrath, or anger, tends to obscure a person’s judgment. Souls stained by this sin must endure literal blindness as a means of purging the sin. As Dante talks with various souls, he has more and more questions about the nature of human sin. Marco Lombardo, a soul doing penance for anger, rejects the idea that people’s behavior is determined by something outside of them. Natural influences might be present, but people also possess a God-given ability to make their own choices, so they can, in fact, be held accountable for their behavior. Marco Lombardo further explains that simple, untrained souls tend to chase any pleasure as far as they can, unless they are curbed by some external power, such as a king, ideally a virtuous one. However, there’s no such ruler today—the “shepherd […] has not split hooves.” That being the case, people behave no more virtuously than their ruler does. In other words, poor governance is another reason for the present state of the world.

Virgil’s discourse here encapsulates Dante’s theory of love and sin. According to Virgil, sin is a matter of the human will gone wrong. What Dante calls “mind-love” refers to love that’s rooted in the rational will (as opposed to mere instinct). Love that’s rooted in the mind, or will, can be twisted into sin in a few different ways—but whether it’s a matter of misdirection, too little love, or too much love, each of these sins is ultimately a distortion of that foundational love.

So far they have seen the sins of perverted love, which is love that harms other people - pride, envy, and wrath. They are going to proceed to see sins that fall short of seeking God - sloth, avarice, greed, and lust.

Dante asks Virgil to explain love further. Virgil explains that the human mind tends toward things that give it delight. The mind internalizes an image of such things, and the mind’s “bending” toward these images is called love. When a mind is captured by what it loves, that’s called desire, and desire pursues what’s loved until it attains it, which then yields joy. Virgil explains that, given this process, it’s clear why all loves aren’t praiseworthy. The basic point Virgil is making is that the object of love must be something external to the self—something outside of a person which draws them towards it by desire. Dante essentially asks why, if an object of love attracts a person from outside of themselves, a person can be held responsible for following that desire. Virgil admits that this is a tricky philosophical problem that’s beyond him. However, in essence, each person possesses free will, which gives them the power to follow or resist the urgings of love.
Before Dante and Virgil progress to the next level of Purgatory, the siren provides an illustration of Virgil’s words above regarding the attraction of an external object to the mind. The woman is herself ugly, but Dante instinctively perceives her song as beautiful and accordingly desires her. In this way, the soul is projecting an image that it loves—it’s not truly loving another person. The other woman symbolizes the proper action of free will in response to such attraction.

FOURTH TERRACE - SLOTH
Souls must run at full speed around the terrace. The crowd urges one another on, saying that time mustn’t be lost “through lack of love.” This is the sin of a lack of love - Sloth. The remaining sins are for excessive love.

FIFTH TERRACE - AVARICE
Souls lie prostrate on the ground in suffering because in their life they only concerned themselves with worldly affairs, and never once looked up towards the heavens. This is the sin of avarice.

As they climb, an earthquake occurs, and they are greeted by a soul who is free to heaven after 500 years of penance. Virgil wants to know who this soul might be, and he identifies himself as Statius, an ancient poet.

SIXTH TERRACE - GLUTTONY
Souls who in life had an excess love for food and drink are now surrounded in fruit and drink. However, they are never satiated and are very thin. This is because their souls in hell are represented by how much they love God, and now no matter how much they eat, they are lacking substance. It is implied that their mouths are no longer used for eating but for praise of God.

SEVENTH TERRACE - LUST
Souls of lust must burn in a great fire.Within the flames, souls stop and kiss, but do not go any further sexually.
It turns out all souls must walk through this cleansing flame to get to heaven.

As Dante walks through, Virgil encourages him to bear with the heat by saying that Beatrice is near.
When they reach the top step, Virgil looks firmly at Dante and says that he’s guided Dante through Hell and Purgatory, but he can’t show him anything else. Now, he says, “take what pleases you to be your guide.” Dante’s will, he adds, “is healthy, upright, free, and whole […] Lord of yourself, I crown and mitre you.”
Dante emerges into a bright, fragrant forest, eager to take it all in. The wood is filled with gentle breezes and joyous birdsong. He comes to a brook and sees a lady on its opposite bank, picking flowers and singing. Dante asks the lady to draw nearer so he can hear the words of her song. The lady steps closer and raises her eyes to Dante; her gaze is full of light, and her laughter fills him with wonder. Dante asks the lady to explain this place, and she explains that it’s the Earthly Paradise(garden of eden)—a place given to human beings (themselves created good) as “pledge of endless peace.” But humanity didn’t stay here long, through their own fault. The lady explains that the flowers and fruits here spring forth of their own accord, and the water, too, because of God’s will. The water of this brook, called Lethe, takes away all memory of sin. The lady adds that the poets who’ve spoken of the Golden Age were dreaming of this very Paradise.

There is a beatiful procession in front of Dante - he sees seven massive golden candlesticks, which guide people in pure white robes. The people are singing a blessing to Beatrice. In their train come four six-winged animals with beautiful feathers. Between the four-winged creatures is drawn a chariot, a gryphon harnessed to the front. To the right of the chariot, three ladies (the Three Graces) are dancing—one of them fiery read, one emerald green, and one snow white. To the left, four purple-clad ladies (the Four Virtues) sing, led by one with three eyes on her brow. They’re followed by a group of seven elders garlanded with flowers. The procession stops in front of Dante, and thunder is heard.

The procession stops, and the people face the chariot. Above the chariot, 100 angels sing, “Blessed art thou who comest,” as well as a line from Virgil’s Aeneid: “With full hands give lilies.” As flowers drift around the chariot from the angels’ hands, a white-veiled lady in a green robe and red dress appears. Dante, sensing “the ancient power of what love was,” begins to tremble and instinctively turns toward Virgil—but Virgil is not there.

Dante's grief of his sin begin to surface. When he sees Eden, a place of complete innocence, he feels remorse for his sins in comparison. He faints with remorse - the story of how Dante found himself in the dark wood of error when Beatrice died is told.
He is dipped in the Lethe. Beatrice tells him to write down the following sights:
Earlier, Dante saw a pageant depicting the life of the Church up to the time of Christ. This pageant depicts the life of the Church since then. In short, it depicts the tragedy of conflict between the earthly and spiritual realms. The eagle represents the Roman Empire, persecuting the Church in its early centuries, but also the Emperor Constantine’s establishment of the Church as the official imperial religion. The vixen, or fox, represents heresies that troubled the Church from within. The dragon probably presents the devil. Each of these images represents a way in which the Church is persecuted by foreign influences.

They approach two diverging streams in the distance, and Matilda explains that this is Eunoe. She draws both Dante and Statius toward the water. Dante takes an inexpressibly sweet drink and withdraws from the stream feeling “remade […] pure and prepared to rise towards the stars.”