Purgatory, Canto 28SummaryDante, followed by his companions, enters the Sacred Wood, and presently comes to a brook, on the farther bank of which is a Lady, singing and gathering flowers. She answers his questions about the Earthly Paradise, and intimates that the Golden Age of which poets have dreamed is a lingering memory of this place where Man was once innocent and happy.
The Prepatory LectureQuestions for Reflection
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Purgatory, Canto 28 © Jan Hearn
The ImagesThe Earthly Paradise: The scenery of Dante’s Earthly Paradise is said to have been taken from the Pineta (pine-wood) of Classe (Chiassi), near Ravenna on the Adriatic, where the last cantos of the Purgatory were written. In so far as poets “take” their ideal scenery from any actual place, this is doubtless true; but it does not fully explain Dante’s insistence on speaking always of “the sacred Forest”, “the ancient Forest”, and never employing the more usual and traditional image of a garden. We can scarcely doubt that he is deliberately making a parallel and contrast with the “dark Wood”, the “rough and stubborn Forest”, from which he set out upon his journey (Inf. i. 1 sqq.). In the allegory, the Earthly Paradise is the state of innocence. It is from here that Man, if he had never fallen, would have set out upon his journey to the Celestial Paradise which is his ultimate destination; but because of sin, his setting-out is from that other Forest which is the degraded and horrifying parody of this one. His whole journey through Hell and Purgatory is thus a return journey in search of his true starting-place — the return to original innocence. Natural innocence is not an end in itself, but the necessary condition of beginning: it was never intended that unfallen Adam should remain static, but that he should progress from natural to supernatural perfection. I think it is therefore a mistake to suppose, as many have done, that Dante’s Earthly Paradise stands for the perfect Empire, the perfection of the Active Life, the “felicity of this life”, or even for the perfection of the Natural Life, except in the sense that it represents the recovery of that original perfection of human nature which was impaired by the Fall. Once we remember that Eden is, and was always meant to be, a starting-place and not a stopping-place, we shall have little difficulty in finding a consistent and intelligible significance for the allegory.
The Lady: The literal and allegorical identity of this delightful Lady is perhaps the most tantalizing problem in the Comedy. Her name — as we are casually informed in the final canto — is Matilda; and from the fact that she has a name we are entitled to infer that she is no abstraction, but a personality as real and human as Beatrice herself. Beyond this, so far as her literal identity is concerned, all is conjecture, (See Appendix.) Much more important is her allegorical significance. The fact that she is “discovered” picking flowers, like the Leah of Dante’s dream (xxvii. 97-9), assures us that she is in some way a type of the Active Life; and some commentators have seen in her the “one permanent resident” of the Earthly Paradise, and supposed her to be the image of Empire, Philosophy, or Natural Perfection. There is, however, no reason to assume that her presence in the place is permanent: what is certain is that she forms part of Beatrice’s retinue; and her obvious function is to prepare Dante for his meeting with Beatrice. Accepting this for the moment, we will consider her again in the Images to Canto xxxiii. Mark Vernon's Lecture |
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