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Dante's Purgatorio XXX is a canto of transition, as Dante prepares to leave Mount Purgatory and enter Heaven. Dante the poet has earlier hinted at the necessity of a change of guides for Dante the Pilgrim in order to complete his prescribed journey. The suddenness of that exchange comes rather unexpectedly for both Dante and his readers. As the majestic Beatrice approaches him, Dante turns to Virgil, as he has become accustomed to do during the last 63 cantos, using the simile of a trembling child turning to its mother for comfort. When he turns, however, and states his fear out loud, his words fall mutely to the ground, for Virgil has quietly departed the scene. Dante's brief encomium that follows, however, becomes the focal point of the movement in this canto celebrating repentance. We thus come to see repentance not just as a progress through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but specifically as a process of transition from one guide to another.
The poet has already equated Virgil to a mother. Now he is described as "sweetest of fathers" (XXX.50). When Beatrice has fully entered the scene a few lines later, she comes dressed in the simile of an admiral. Thus, we compare Dante to a young cabin boy heading off to sea under the tutelage of an old sea captain, to extend his own simile further. We can imagine the many tears that such a boy might weep in the first few days of his new life, thinking back to the home and family he has always known, but now lying so far away. And of course the old sea captain draws the boy's attention away from that past life to focus on the task at hand. In Dante's words, "Do not weep yet/there is another sword to make you weep." (XXX.56-7) We can expect that these experiences of our hero will one day produce a man worthy of our admiration.
The commentators divide up Dante's journey into two main parts, each marked by a different guide. Virgil's task was helping Dante to master his own will in order to fully bend it to God's. Beatrice will now aim to reform his intellect or understanding of God. This then is Dante's view of repentance: We must bow our will to God, and having done so, we will come to fully understand God's ways, fully overcome our sinful ways, and complete our path to divine perfection. I suspect that most of us tend to think of repentance in a more Platonic way, simply as a matter of recognizing and understanding our fault. One can hear the voice of Socrates: once we know what is good and right, we will surely do good and right rather than evil. Yet, our sins are typically the result not of faulty knowledge, but simply of a weak will. We know at some level that we should not do it, but we just can not help it. Surely, then, Dante is right to spend 2/3 of his poem of repentance and salvation learning to curb his appetites, bending his will to God's will.
This makes the final line of his 'farewell to Virgil' tercet all the more poignant. It calls to my mind the twenty-first verse of Obadiah: "And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s." As Beatrice tells us later in the canto, it was she who shed tears before Virgil in a last ditch effort to save Dante, essentially from himself, or at least his weak will. From Dante's perspective, however, at least at this point in the poem, it has been Virgil who has been the real author of his repentence: "Virgil, to whom I gave myself for my salvation." (XXX.51) Virgil is acquited of any potential charge of trying to usurp Beatrice's primary role in Dante's true conversion process, since he has repeatedly made mention of the lady who sent him on his errand. Nevertheless, it is Vergil who appeared to Dante in the dark woods at the very beginning of the poem; it is Virgil who safely guided Dante past the devil and his minions in Inferno; and it is Virgil who has been his constant support in his upward climb through Purgatory. It is no wonder that Dante cannot stop the flow of tears at the loss of his guide and mentor. Dante's language also seems to suggest that it may have been his study of Virgil's poetry in real life that has not only inspired him in his current vocation, but indeed led him to this salutatory point of repentance.
And so, as readers of Dante's poem, we too must bid farewell to the old Roman at this point, and prepare ourselves to continue the journey into Paradiso, perhaps by shedding a tear or two of our own for the poor fellow who must now hasten back alone to his eternal home in limbo. We can only wish him a safe and happy return, and perhaps some future adventure, if he so wishes it, as our guide on our own journey towards salvation.
RPC
