Purgatory: Canto 21, The Fifth Cornice -- Statius

2005-03-06T22:51:00.000-08:00

The earthquake on the mountain is explained by Statius, a soul who had just then completed five centuries of purgation on the cornice of avarice, as being something that occurs whenever any soul suddenly wills himself or herself into heaven. As Statius explains, "Before purgation [the soul] does wish to climb,/ but the will High Justice sets against that wish/ moves it to will pain as it once willed crime" (64-6). In this, we develop a stronger sense of Purgatory in the idea that God sets a clock on the wills so that the souls do not feel moved to rise until they have sufficiently purged themselves according to that standard -- like St. Frances of Rome, who was detained for an entirely devotional life for the span of her husband's existence -- to state it more positively, until they have sufficiently filled their deficits with the corresponding virtue.

For those who haven't read the Thebiad, which deals with the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polydices, and their battle over Thebes following their father's having blinded himself to walk the earth (like Cain in Kung Fu), it may not be known that Statius had died more than a thousand years before Dante arrived (in 96 A.D., to be exact), and almost half his time had gone to the purgation of avarice and the reconciliation of his state of being with God. His conversion to Christianity would have likely been late, which explains where he was the first 700 years (400 of which were spent on the cornice of sloth), but he claims he turned to Christ after reading Virgil's Fourth Eclogue (posted in our very own Canto 1 of the Purgatorio), which was enough, it seems, to have provided for Statius's salvation in his having read it, but not enough to provide for Virgil's in his having written it.

After the introductions have been made and Statius has explained more of the nature of the mountain, he adds that he was one of the "more than a thousand poets" kindled by the flame of the Aeneid (96). He concludes by adding that had he been allowed to live during Virgil's time, he wouldn't have minded staying another year cleaving to dust on the cornice. At that, Dante smiles, and, given leave at last by Virgil, is able to declare that Statius is standing in the man's presence. Such is the awesome nature of God, of course, for it was Statius's most sincere dream to be able to walk the same streets alongside Virgil, and here he is, his purgation at an end, living his desire. What a great prelude to heaven for him, and it was no coincidence that Statius would rise from the floor of the ledge just as Virgil passed him by.

Statius, of course, wastes no time in kneeling before Virgil, and is immediately reminded that both of them are incorporeal shades who no longer observe the customs of the orb from which they had come. This is not to say that the gesture is wasted, but humanity is an evolutionary species, and that to which we grow accustomed at one phase of our existence is often something beyond which we must grow in another. Pope underscores this point in writing,

A longer care man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the interest and the love;
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise
(Epistle 3, III).

In the case of Statius and Virgil, that both continue to resemble living men is a different point altogether, but this isn't a new concept to Dante. In La Vita Nuova, Dante anthropomorphizes love itself and discusses it in his 25th canto of that smaller book: "At this point it may be that someone worthy of having every doubt cleared up could be puzzled at my speaking of Love as if it were a thing in itself, as if it were not only an intellectual substance, but also a bodily substance. This is patently false, for Love does not exist in itself as a substance, but is an accident in a substance" (1). If love can take human form, then, too, can two spirits, one of whom with an insatiable admiration for the other, and it only makes sense that the newly risen soul would have an atavistic response to meeting someone whose memory obviously provided him with comfort during his long years of reconciliation.

S.

Purgatory: Canto 21 -- Praise of Virgil

Purgatory: Canto 21, The Fifth Cornice -- Statius