Purgatory: Canto 31 -- Lethe -- Beatrice and Matilda

Well, my audience was probably wondering whether, like Virgil, I'd disappeared from this board after being lost in the piney woods of East Texas. I would like to announce first that my family and I have arrived safely at my uncle's house and that the postings will continue as though uninterrupted by my travels.

We left off with Beatrice's beginning her first encounter with Dante by scolding him for his neglect of her. This assault on Dante’s conscience doesn’t abate until she forces him into a confession on the nature of the one remaining sin for which he can be held accountable. She writes that this chief guilt was that he had been filled with the desire she had taught him for "That Good beyond which nothing/ exists on earth to which man may aspire" (23-4) and that he who even wrote: "lost is the city's source of blessedness, and I know words that could be said of her with power to humble any man to tears" (Vita XXXX, 9) had abandoned the purpose once she was no longer physically in his presence. He explains though in contrition rather than defense that he had become distracted by the things of the world, which is enough to placate her wrath, and she moves from judge to teacher in that instant.



The lesson is simple -- if she, in all her glory could pass away, how ephemeral, then, was everything material, in particular, the love of any other maid. It has been written elsewhere that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned -- neither, does it appear, has heaven. Dante senses the venom in this instruction and is overcome by another look upon the entire scene around him, something he hasn't done since he saw the pain of Paulo and Francesca in the second circle of the canticle of pain. With this confession, though, Beatrice absolves him as a priest would clean the soul of the true penitent and Matilda submerges him in the river and raises him to New Life where he's able to look upon Beatrice in all her splendor and through her eyes see the dual nature of Christ so that he, like St. Joseph, might open himself totally to God.

S.