Purgatory, Canto 29

The Sayers Text of Purgatory Canto 29 (Open PDF)

A Prose translation of Canto 29 (by David Bruce)

Summary

As Dante and the Lady, one on either hank, follow the winding course of the River upstream, they see light and hear music advancing towards them through the Forest from the East; and soon the Pageant of the Sacrament comes into view, and halts before Dante on the Lady’s side of the River.

The Prepatory Lecture

Click here if video doesn't appear.

Questions for Reflection

• In lines 37-39, Dante again invokes the Muses, but his tone is different. He says that he has suffered on their behalf and now expects his reward. What is going on here?
• As the bizarre parade of the griffin begins, Dante looks back to Virgil for some kind of answer, but Virgil can only respond with a look of amazement. Why is Virgil silent here? Why does Dante turn to him? Why would the Poet keep Virgil in the narrative if he’s no longer teaching the pilgrim anything? Or has the teacher now become the student?
• How are Dante’s desires still not quite perfectly aligned with the highest Good (29.58-63)?
• Describing one of the beasts in the parade, Dante describes their wings and says that John (the apostle) agrees with Dante’s vision rather than Ezekiel’s vision. What does Dante’s cheeky claim tell us about the theological authority of his poem?
• Who are the dancing girls at the end of the canto? What announces the approach of Beatrice?

Purgatory, Canto 29 © Jan Hearn

The Images

The Beatrician Pageants: Readers who have followed with interest Dante’s use of natural, as opposed to conventional, symbols for the purpose of his allegory, now have an opportunity to see what he could, if he thought fit, do with the other method, and how he uses the one as a contrast and foil to the other. For the great focal point of the Commedia — the reunion of Dante with Beatrice — is deliberately set, as though upon a stage, between two great pageants or masques, in which the characters are not symbolic personages but allegorical personifications in the traditional manner, embodying abstract ideas. When I say “masques”, I mean exactly that. I do not mean that Dante has suddenly changed his convention and introduced into his narrative a whole collection of abstractions who mingle with his “real” people on equal terms. I mean that the Angels and Intelligences whom he mentions in the course of these concluding cantos are, in the most literal sense, masquers, who represent before him a contrived pageant, in the contemporary fashion, for his personal instruction and to the honour of Beatrice and all she stands for. The persons are still actual existent beings, as all actors are existent beings; but they are actors, and they are presenting a show.

Those who complain of the “frigid allegorical conceits” of these masques have not, I think, fully grasped Dante’s intention. The contrast of style is carefully contrived for its purpose; just as, in Hamlet, the style of the “play-within-the-play” is made quite different from that of the play itself, and much more rigidly conventional. The poet’s design is to frame between these two formal spectacles the moving and intensely personal interview between Beatrice and her lover, and so give it enhanced emphasis and relief. Between them, the two Masques display the history of the Church (1) up to and including the Incarnation, and (2) from the days of the Apostles to the time of writing. The first is primarily doctrinal; the second, historical and political.

The First Masque: The Pageant of the Sacrament: I have called it so because this description agrees best with its formal presentation, but what it shows is something still greater: the whole revelation of the indwelling of Christ in His creation through the union of His two natures, Divine and Human (technically known as the “Hypostatic Union”). Of this union, the Sacrament of the Altar is at once the divinely ordained symbol, and the means by which Christians participate in that union; and in the Masque, Beatrice — Dante’s own particular “God-bearing Image” — plays the part of the Sacrament. It is at this point that masque and reality become inextricably welded into a single dominating Image; for the historical Beatrice is, for Dante, what she represents, just as, after a higher and universal manner, the Sacrament is what it represents, and — after a manner more absolute still — Christ is what He represents.

Mark Vernon's Lecture