Purgatory, Canto 21

The Sayers Text of Purgatory Canto 21 (Open PDF)

A Prose translation of Canto 20 (by David Bruce)

Summary

WHILE passing along the Fifth Cornice, Dante and Virgil are overtaken by the shade of the poet Statius, who tells them that the shouts and the shaking of the Mountain celebrate the release of a soul from Purgatory, and explains how that release is ef ected. It is he himself who has just risen up from over 500 years of prostration among the Covetous. In answer to Virgil’s question, he names himself saying how much he wishes he could have seen the author of the Aeneid, to whose example his own poetry owes so much. Despite Virgil’s warning, Dante betrays himself by an irrepressible smile and, on being desired to explain this apparent breach of good manners, has to admit that his companion is Virgil himself. Only Virgil’s own earnest dissuasions prevent Statius from falling at his feet.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• What story from the Gospels does Dante echo at the opening of this canto? How does this gospel narrative frame the canto?
• Dante surprises us by including another pagan poet, Statius, in Purgatory. Dante introduces us to Statius by comparing him to Christ on the road to Emmaus story from the gospel of Luke. What does this tell us about Dante’s understanding of the relationship between the souls in Purgatory and Christ?
• Does Dante the Poet have the right to save pagan figures like Statius? 
• According to Statius, why did the mountain shake in the previous canto (21.57-60)? What does this show us about the community on the Mountain? How does it contrast with the “community” of Inferno?
• How does a soul in purgatory know that it is ready to ascend to God (21.61-66)?
• How did Statius become a poet? (94ff)?  ​

Purgatory, Canto 21 © Jan Hearn

The Images

Publius Papinius Statius (c. a.d. 45-96) was the author of the Thebaid (an epic on the history of Eteocles and Polynices — v. Inf. xxvi. 54 and note) and part of an Achilleid, together with a volume (the Silvae) of occasional poems, the libretto of a pantomime, the Agave (now lost, but mentioned by Juvenal), and a poem on the German wars of Domitian (also lost).

Dante’s evident admiration for this poet of the “Silver Age” was a standing puzzle to the older and severer school of classical criticism, but modern scholarship tends to take a more favourable view (see Oxf. Class. Dict., art. Statius), and his poems were highly popular both in the Middle Ages and in his own day. C. S. Lewis (Allegory of Love, p-56) finds in his work the first beginnings of allegory as a literary form, and this may help to account for Dante’s interest in him.

​The significance of Statius in the imagery of the Comedy has been much disputed; but it seems likely that Dante wished to show the soul as being accompanied and helped on its journey, not only by Old Rome (natural Humanism) but also by the New (Christian) Rome (redeemed Humanism). The story of Statius’s conversion, if it does not derive from ecclesiastical legend, may have been invented by Dante for this purpose.

Mark Vernon's Lecture