was almost natural for the Romantics of the nineteenth
century—the post-Napoleonic age—to identify with
these doomed characters, to see them as icons of dismay,
and to take them as the signifi cant heroes of Dante’s
poem. In the twentieth century, a time when readers
cast a more ironic eye on such projections of the self,
these characters lost some of their allure. Indeed, some
twentieth-century counter-Romantics called Francesca
a Madame Bovary and regarded Ulysses merely as a
footloose adventurer. Twentieth-century critics tended
to be more conscious of the totality of the poem and
considered it appropriate to put some distance between
the reader and the characters of the Inferno. They also
discerned a distance between the author, with his full
understanding, and the naive narrator—the pilgrim who
is only on the way toward gaining the fuller comprehen-
sion that has been in the author’s possession from the
beginning.
The intermediate but central and pivotal poem in
Dante’s trilogy is Purgatorio. Here the painful process
of reconstruction begins. In Inferno, the characters have
distinct identities, but in Purgatorio they adhere to the
central motif of pilgrimage. In this sense, Purgatorio
is dominated not by individualism but by spiritual
brotherhood. Poetically, the cantos are not devoted to
grand individuals but consist of a medley of forces and
fi gures.
Purgatorio includes abundant discussions of art,
poetry, philosophy, which are notably absent from In-
ferno. Nevertheless, Purgatorio is a canticle of stringent
exclusions: any forces that do not contribute directly to
salvation must be abandoned. For this reason, the sum-
mary plot of Purgatorio involves a rejection of Virgil.
Virgil, the father to whom Dante gave himself for his
salvation, the embodiment of the poetry and wisdom of
the classical world, is now himself found to be defi cient.
Because he did not present in his own poetic works the
kind of fullness that Dante discovered in the philosophy
of Christ, Virgil must now succumb to the historical vi-
sion that was his own. Virgil must give place to Beatrice,
who will now be Dante’s mentor and his guide to the
possibilities of the Christian vision.
Dante was heir to a heroic Roman culture and was
convinced of the rightness of the creative design for the
universe; therefore, it would not have been fi tting for
him to rest his poem on the straitened consolations of
the purgatorial way. The purpose of the original divine
creation was not restraint but fulfi llment. Appropriately,
then, Dante’s trilogy is capped by Paradiso, where the
original human instinct to return to God fi nds its right-
ful, heroic fulfi llment in the lives of the saints. Paradiso
brings to completion the triptychs of the poem. But
while the vision of Paradiso is transcendent, it does
not obscure the preceding books; rather, it asks us to
look back, to consider its exemplars in relation to their
antecedents. In this sense, although the Commedia is a
poem in process, its vision is retrospective. The meet-
ing with Piccarda Donati in Paradiso 3, which creates a
powerful impression, is intended to recall the meetings
with Francesca in Inferno and La Pia in Purgatorio;
these meetings are an ensemble of cross-references and
mutual commentary. We cannot fully assess Francesca
until we have experienced La Pia, and each of these
two is incomplete until we have known Piccarda. This
method implies freedom as well as divine trust. We are
not confi ned to Francesca’s powerful appeal; the essen-
tial life-force and motives of love that are misdirected
by Francesca are redirected by La Pia and fi nd their
fulfi llment in Piccarda’s sublime faith: “In his will is our
peace” (E ‘n la sua volontade è nostra pace, 3.85).
These motives—freedom and fulfi llment—are real-
ized in an even greater triptych controlling the central
cantos of each canticle. Imitating and transforming the
pivotal episode in Book 6 of The Aeneid, where Aeneas
receives the message of his life from his own father,
Anchises, Dante constructs the central encounter of each
of his books around a father fi gure: Brunetto Latini in
Canto 15 of Inferno; a composite of Guido del Duca
and Marco Lombardo in Cantos 14–16 of Purgatorio;
and his own great-great-grandfather in Paradiso 15–17.
Each meeting addresses the central topic of the Com-
media, Dante’s preparation for the coming blow: for
exile. Although each provides essential information,
it is from Cacciaguida that Dante acquires the clearest
idea of the impending tragedy; and as we have noted,
at the same time he receives (as he has been receiving
all along) the resources to cope with that catastrophe.
Christian realism encompasses the tragedy of history
and also provides the means for transcending history;
this is why, in its fullest meaning, the poem may be re-
garded as a divine comedy. Brunetto Latini is a worthy
man but a marred exemplar; Guido del Duca and Marco
Lombardo are sustaining fi gures along the way; but it
is in the presence of Cacciaguida, Dante’s biological as
well as spiritual source, that he discovers the intimate
meaning of his life. He transcends the need for consola-
tion: “You are my father, you give me all boldness to
speak, you uplift me so that I am more than myself”
(Paradiso, 16.16–18). These lines manifest the purpose
of the poem, heroic paideia (or ultimate education). In
Inferno, paideia is dysfunctional: the exemplars are
false fi gures, parts of the mind of hell and aspects of
the problem rather than of the solution. In Purgatorio
there are no heroic fi gures at all; all the fi gures partake
of a penitential discipline and a spiritual brotherhood.
In Paradiso, heroic paideia functions rightly as Dante
fi nds his own true nature and expression in the models
of Christian history. Not even Virgil offered these in-
timate, personal, and yet transcendent possibilities for
redemption.DANTE ALIGHIERI