What We Must Forget (Dante and Purgatory)

Last updated on: May 5, 2017 at 8:34 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

What We Must Forget (Dante and Purgatory) 2017-05-05T20:34:02-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Dante did not love Beatrice, not the way he believed he loved Beatrice. For a romantic like I am, that is a hard sentence to write. If you haven’t read the whole Divine Comedy, just the Inferno, you might believe that Beatrice was Dante’s real love. Isn’t he constantly talking about her all through Hell? Doesn’t she help save him from suicide?

She was not his real love and we know, because she says so:

Some time did I sustain him with my look; Revealing unto him my youthful eyes, I led him with me turned in the right way. As soon as ever of my second age I was upon the threshold and changed life, Himself from me he took and gave to others. When from the flesh to spirit I ascended, And beauty and virtue were in me increased, I was to him less dear and less delightful; And into ways untrue he turned his steps, Pursuing the false images of good, That never any promises fulfil; Nor prayer for inspiration me availed, By means of which in dreams and otherwise I called him back, so little did he heed them. So low he fell, that all appliances For his salvation were already short, Save showing him the people of perdition. For this I visited the gates of death, And unto him, who so far up has led him, My intercessions were with weeping borne. God’s lofty fiat would be violated, If Lethe should be passed, and if such viands Should tasted be, withouten any scot Of penitence, that gushes forth in tears.”*

Dante “loved” Beatrice when she was alive and he could see her and the poet loved her as an idea, but he did not love Beatrice as she was in Paradise. He loved the appearance or his fantasy of the person, but not the person herself. Yet Dante came to love Beatrice, really love her, and doing so somehow involved (as one college student put it) Dante getting nearly drowned like a puppy. This better love is what is interesting and helpful, though few outside the scholarly community notice the change.

Beatrice moves from muse to guide and that is the key. You cannot love a person, not really, who merely “inspires” you. This is utterly selfish, the lover loves what is done to self and only loves the “beloved” in so far as she helps him.

Dante used Beatrice, as surely as if they had had sexual relations. His “use” of her was no better, because of the poetry it produced and the author of the Comedy (Dante!) knew this truth. He had to be willing to forgot himself, his poetry, and his muse and see her, Beatrice, the woman. Dante had to love Beatrice as Beatrice.

I saw, and she was saying, “Hold me, hold me.” Up to my throat she in the stream had drawn me, And, dragging me behind her, she was moving Upon the water lightly as a shuttle. When I was near unto the blessed shore, “Asperges me,” I heard so sweetly sung, Remember it I cannot, much less write it. The beautiful lady opened wide her arms, Embraced my head, and plunged me underneath, Where I was forced to swallow of the water.**

Dante drinks the river of forgetfulness, but what does he forget? He remembers Beatrice. He knows his own name, but what he has forgotten is the endless posturing about his fame, name, and greatness. He is no longer Dante, poet or Dante, great man. He is now himself having forgotten his sins, including the accomplishments which he thought made him a man, but really obscured his reality.

Dante is ready to see the Good, Truth, and Beauty and can love Beatrice passionately, because he loves her. Love God, know yourself, and love Beatrice as you will.

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*Dante Alighieri ; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2010-04-09). The Divine Comedy (pp. 328-329). . Kindle Edition.

**Dante Alighieri ; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2010-04-09). The Divine Comedy (pp. 332-333). . Kindle Edition.

This was the devotional for a class at The College at The Saint Constantine School.

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This was inspired by a devotional in The College at The Saint Constantine School.

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