Purgatory, Canto 19SummarySHORTLY before dawn, Dante dreams of the Siren and her song, and sees her unmasked by Virgil at the bidding of a Discreet Lady. He wakes at Virgil’s call to find that it is broad daylight, and as they proceed on their way they are met by the Angel of Zeal, who pronounces the Benediction and directs them to the next stairway. Coming to the Fifth Cornice, they encounter the spirits of the Covetous, fettered face downwards, and Dante talks with the shade of Pope Adrian V.
The Prepatory LectureQuestions for Reflection
The Canticle in this CantoAdhaesit pavimento
Psalm 119 25 MY soul cleaveth to the dust : O quicken thou me, according to thy word. 26 I have acknowledged my ways, and thou heardest me : O teach me thy statutes. 27 Make me to understand the way of thy commandments : and so shall I talk of thy wondrous works. 28 My soul melteth away for very heaviness : comfort thou me according unto thy word. 29 Take from me the way of lying : and cause thou me to make much of thy law. 30 I have chosen the way of truth : and thy judgements have I laid before me. 31 I have stuck unto thy testimonies : O Lord, confound me not. 32 I will run the way of thy commandments : when thou hast set my heart at liberty. |
Purgatory, Canto 19 © Jan Hearn
The ImagesDante’s Dream of the Siren: This, the second of Dante’s dreams in Purgatory, is the subtlest and most difficult of the three. It has often been imitated since his time, but never with his wealth of implication.
Virgil (ll. 58-9) calls the Siren that “ancient witch” because of whose beguilements the souls do penance in Upper Purgatory. Obviously, she does not represent the “Secondary Goods” themselves, for whom love (in due measure) is right and proper. Moreover, she is at first sight unattractive; she only acquires strength and beauty from Dante’s own gaze. She is, therefore, the projection upon the outer world of something in the mind: the soul, falling in love with itself, perceives other people and things, not as they are, but as wish-fulfilments of its own: i.e. its love for them is not love for a “true other” (cf. xviii. 22-6 and note), but a devouring egotistical fantasy, by absorption in which the personality rots away into illusion. The Siren is, in fact, the “ancient witch” Lilith, the fabled first wife of Adam, who was not a real woman of flesh and blood, but a magical imago, begotten of Samael, the Evil One, to be a fantasm of Adam’s own desires. (According to Rabbinical legend, God, seeing that “it was not good for man to be alone” with himself in this fashion, created Eve to be his true other, and to be loved and respected by him as a real person.) In later legend, the magical fantasm of man’s own desire is the demon-lover called the succubus (or in the case of a woman, the incubus), intercourse with which saps the strength and destroys the life. The Lady who intervenes to thwart the Siren is not to be identified with Beatrice, Lucy, or any other of the poem’s dramatis personae. It will be noticed that she acts more promptly than Virgil (reason); but she cannot herself unmask the Siren; she calls upon Virgil to do so. She symbolizes something immediate, instinctive, and almost automatic: one might call her an intuition, or perhaps the reflex action of a virtuous habit, whose instant warning puts the soul on the alert and prompts it to think rationally about what it is doing. [Charles Williams’s novel, Descent into Hell, is a brilliant expansion and interpretation of the theme of Dante’s dream of the Siren. Those who do not care for commentary in the form of fiction may find illumination in a phrase of Fr Gerald Vann’s: “If you exalt the objects of your love until your picture is a false one; if you idealize them; if you project upon them your own ideal self; then you are loving not a real person but a dream” (The Seven Swords — italics mine).] The Penance of the Covetous: Binding in fetters face downwards: Covetousness (Avaritia) is the inordinate love of wealth, and the power that wealth gives, whether it is manifested by miserly hoarding or by lavish spending. It is a peculiarly earth-bound sin, looking to nothing beyond the rewards of this life (cf. Bunyan’s “man with the muck-rake”); it is expiated here by the endurance of its effects; the souls are so fettered that they can see nothing but the earth on which they once set store. Pope Adrian is the image of Covetousness in the form of Ambition — the concentration upon worldly place and power — an ambition no less earthbound for being centred upon ecclesiastical preferment. Mark Vernon's Lecture |
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