Purgatorio Subversions

When Dante, in his Purgatorio, reaches the summit of the mountain of purgatory, he finds the biblical Garden of Eden itself, replete with saintly creatures and wondrous natural beauty. He also encounters his late love Beatrice, in a heavenly procession. Dante has set up what could be a perfect example of the meeting of the locus amoenis and fin amour traditions in medieval literature, a story of the hero finding his romantic interest in a beautiful garden. Instead, Dante subverts both genres; the locus amoenis is not the usual imitation of the Garden of Eden, but the Garden of Eden itself, and Beatrice proves not to be a fawning young maid, but a tough-talking saint who chastises her knight. By uniquely approaching these literary tropes, Dante is able not only to create a compelling novel situation, but also to make grand theological claims. The reader is to learn through these subversions that the transitory affections of mortal life are far inferior to the eternal happiness to be enjoyed by living with right priorities.

In most medieval romances, the locus amoenis is a resplendent garden suggestive of earthly Paradise, wherein the romance between a knight and his lady grows and is explored. As stated earlier, Dante does these earlier poets one better: his locus amoenis is the original Garden of Eden. Not only is this garden as naturally beautiful as any imagined locus amoenus, its beauty is enhanced by its residents, who are holy beings in a constant state of praise for God and other saints. The wonder of God’s creation is augmented by a glorious procession, which on earth, could only be the result of human creativity and ritual (both inspired by God). Dante could have made the top of purgatory into anything he desired, but he chose a specific garden. Even if one was to assume that a garden is the suitable choice to top of purgatory, Dante’s choice of Eden itself is significant. There is a Platonic sense of perfection in Dante’s Eden, where other loci amoenis are only flawed imitations of the form itself. It is not only Eden but also its residents who are important, and the superiority of this garden over other literary brethren ought to suggest that what the hero will find therein is far superior to the contents of other loci amoenis. The divine love of expressed by the saints, in this case Beatrice, is (quite literally, as Eden is at the top of a mountain) far above the temporal romantic affections indulged in by poets.

It is here in Eden that Dante finds his long-lost love Beatrice, of whom the reader has heard much about throughout both Purgatorio and the Inferno. Dante is awestruck by Beatrice’s glorious appearance, amidst angelic host and flying lilies. “I know the signs of the ancient flame,” (XXX.48) he speaks to a missing Virgil, who has begun his return to limbo, whose absence causes Dante to weep. In a traditional fin amour, the lady would perhaps attempt to comfort her distraught knight at the loss of a friend and companion. Not so with Beatrice. Her first words to Dante are wrenchingly brusque: “Dante, because Virgil has departed,/ do not weep, do not weep yet-/ there is another sword to make you weep,” (XXX.55-57), a version of the vaunted parental warning “I’ll give you something to cry about.”

After this initial shock of coldness, Dante continues to turn the fin amour tradition on its head. The ‘amour’ of fin amour was romantic in nature, and so far in the Comedy we have understood Dante’s love for Beatrice to be romantic itself. However, when Dante is finally brought face-to-face with Beatrice, his reaction is that of a child facing a scolding mother. Indeed, Dante describes his feelings as such, narrating “as a mother may seem overbearing to her child,/ so she seemed to me, for the taste/ of such stern pity is a bitter taste,” (XXX.79-81). In a usual fin amour, the male character is often a valiant knight, who performs some heroic service for the common good or the sake of his lady. While Dante has performed a rather epic feat, descending into hell, scaling the legs of Satan and climbing up Purgatory to Eden, at this point in the tale he is anything but valiant. “I lowered my eyes to the clear water./ But when I saw myself reflected, I drew them back/ toward the grass, such shamed weighed on my brow,” (XXX..76-78). After another accusatory salvo, Dante breaks down and cries. Dante’s timidity is caused not only by fear but also abiding love for Beatrice. Likewise, Beatrice’s stern accusations come not from malice but from her own love of Dante. In Purgatorio XXXI, the reader begins to see the purpose of these harsh words.

This chapter of the Comedy is set up according to Dante’s understanding of the structure of the sacrament of confession; here, Beatrice acts as a confessor to Dante’s penitent. One should be struck by the bizarre situation in which Dante has placed his characters. Before this, Dante has come to this ultimate locus amoenis, and the reader expects him to have an appropriately touching reunion with his lost love. Instead, his love has turned out to be rather brutal in her addressing of Dante, and instead of a romantic embrace, they are now bound together in a sort of paradisiacal sacrament of penance. This contrast should not only be jarring in a literary sense; Dante wants his readers to take something theologically from this encounter. The contentment of earthly affections breeds its own evils, which Dante must overcome if he is going to approach heaven. At Beatrice’s invitation, he confesses, “Things set in front of me,/ with their false delights, turned back my steps/ the moment that Your countenance was hidden,” (XXXI.34-36). Dante’s confession is accepted, and Beatrice finally turns a loving smiled toward him. Such a smile is worth all of his emotional trials: “O splendor of eternal living light… Heaven with its harmonies reflected in you,/ when in the wide air you unveiled yourself,” (XXXI.139-145).

In the end, then, Dante’s encounter with Beatrice ends as any worthwhile fin amour should; the blessed lady looks with great favor upon her gentleman. Even so, this look, as made ineffably beautiful by divine love, is vastly superior to any other that had been expressed. And one ought to remember that though this happy ending was achieved, it was preceded by an unusual sacramental moment, and it is indeed no true ending at all. Dante and Beatrice are not going to live together happily ever after; at the end of this trip, Beatrice will return to Heaven and Dante to earth. The very point and goal of this reunion is not the continuation of romance but the salvation of Dante’s soul. This is why their meeting is so oddly frank, why it occurred in earthly Paradise, and why it even occurred at all.

All of these literary subversions truly make for a compellingly unique story, and stand strong on their own legs of artistic merit. But Dante’s vision was not meant only to entertain but to speak something truly meaningful about the nature of love. His use of the traditions of fin amour and locus amoenus, long associated with love, turns long-accepted understandings of romance into a theological statement. The subversion of these tropes serves to highlight the need of right priorities: loving God needs to come before loving all other things, even a person so wondrously good and beautiful as Beatrice. By such ordering, coupled with the realization of sin and the need of repentance, one can approach the salvation offered by God. If Dante must overturn long-standing literary traditions to speak to this effect, so be it. Conventions, quite literally, be damned.