Purgatorio · Canto XXI ·
Purgatorio XXI — Statius Arrives Like Emmaus
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 55 of 100 · Purgatorio, Canto XXI
Before reading
This is the canto in which a soul completes its purgation in front of the pilgrim and reveals himself, gradually, to be one of the most carefully chosen figures in the Commedia. The trembling and the hymn that closed XX get their explanation in the first half of this canto. The soul who explains them is the soul they were for — a Roman poet who has just spent more than twelve hundred years on the mountain and is now ready to ascend. The recognition that organises the canto's deepest pleasure is delayed for nearly a hundred lines: Statius does not yet know that the laurel-crowned shade standing before him is Virgil.
Where the canto sits
The pilgrim is still on the terrace of avarice, walking past the prone bodies of Hugh Capet and his peers. The mountain has just shaken. The pilgrim has asked Virgil what it meant and Virgil has refused to answer, telling him to wait for the next soul they meet. The next soul arrives almost immediately — appearing behind them as Christ appeared behind the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, as already risen from the sepulchral cave. The deliberate Christological framing of this entrance is the canto's first signal that the soul about to speak will turn out to be more than an ordinary penitent.
What it helps to know
The speaker is Publius Papinius Statius (c. AD 45–96), the Roman poet of the Flavian era, author of the twelve-book epic Thebaid (the story of the Seven against Thebes — the war of Oedipus's sons Eteocles and Polynices for the throne of Thebes) and of the unfinished Achilleid (the early life of Achilles, broken off at the end of the first book by Statius's death). The Thebaid was, throughout the Middle Ages, one of the most widely read Latin epics — second in school authority only to Virgil's Aeneid. Statius was therefore not an obscure choice; he was Dante's medieval Latin school text, the post-Virgilian Roman poet a literate fourteenth-century reader would have known almost as well as the Aeneid itself.
What Dante does with the historical Statius is one of the Commedia's most consequential biographical inventions. The historical Statius was a pagan; he died around AD 96 with no record of any Christian commitment. Dante turns him into a secret Christian — converted by reading Virgil's Fourth Eclogue (the famous iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna prophecy that medieval Christians read as a pagan prefiguring of the Nativity) — and places him on the mountain of Purgatory rather than in the Limbo where the historical pagan would belong. The full revelation of Statius's secret Christianity is reserved for the next canto. Here, in XXI, only his purgation and his identity as a poet are revealed.
The doctrine of the trembling mountain that Statius explains is one of Dante's most beautiful inventions. The mountain cannot tremble in its lower regions (below the gate, where the late-repentants of Ante-Purgatory wait); from the gate upward, it can tremble, and it does so only for one cause: when a soul has completed its purgation and is freed to ascend. The soul itself is the cause: when it feels itself ready, when it finds itself capable of moving freely upward, the mountain registers the change as a tremor and the entire community of the saved breaks into the hymn of Bethlehem. The mechanism is precise to Dante's psychology: the will, when it is genuinely converted to the good, cannot be coerced — it moves of itself and the mountain knows the movement before the soul does.
The five-hundred-and-more years Statius declares he has lain on the terrace of avarice place his arrival on the mountain in the early Christian period. The historical Statius died around AD 96; he says he has been on this terrace for more than five hundred years. He must therefore have arrived sometime between approximately AD 700 and now (1300) — the canto leaves the exact date unspecified. The number is generous: avarice in Dante's diagnosis is a sin that takes a long time to purge.
What to read for
Notice the withholding of recognition. Statius enters; greets the travellers; asks about the trembling; explains it; names himself; pays tribute to the Aeneid as the mother of his poetry; and is still talking about Virgil in the third person a hundred lines into the canto. He does not know. Dante, watching, smiles — a small involuntary smile of dramatic irony — and Virgil signals him to keep silent. The whole canto is a slow approach to a recognition the reader has long since made.
Notice the structural rhyme with Inferno IV. Virgil there led Dante through Limbo, where Dante was welcomed by Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan as the sixth of so great a wisdom. Here, on the mountain that Virgil cannot finally climb, a Latin poet returns the compliment to Virgil in absentia. The poetry of the Aeneid, which in Limbo gave Dante his place among the great poets, here gives Statius his salvation. The line that organises the deepest tribute is the one Statius delivers without knowing his teacher is listening: of the Aeneid speak I, which to me a mother was, and was my nurse in song.
Notice the canto's gentleness. After the savage politics of XX, this canto is a piece of quiet pleasure. Two poets meet a third; the third honours the first without knowing the first is there; the pilgrim smiles at the irony; the master signals discretion. The Commedia allows itself, here, the only literary friendship-scene it ever stages between poets at length, and the tone is one of tender comedy.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto answered the trembling of the mountain by introducing the soul it had been for. A new shade appeared behind the two travellers on the road with the explicit iconography of Christ on the road to Emmaus — as Luke writeth that Christ appeared to two upon the way from the sepulchral cave already risen. The new soul greeted them, was asked about the trembling, and gave one of the Purgatorio's most beautiful pieces of doctrine: the mountain trembles only when a soul has completed its purgation, and it trembles because the soul, finding itself free, moves of itself. The new soul then admitted that the freed soul was himself, named himself as the Roman poet who wrote of Thebes and of great Achilles, and paid tribute to the Aeneid as the mother and nurse of his own poetry — all without knowing that the laurel-crowned shade in front of him was Virgil. Dante, watching the irony unfold, smiled involuntarily; Virgil tried to signal silence; Statius noticed the smile and asked what it meant. Dante told him. Statius stooped to embrace Virgil's feet; Virgil restrained him with the gentlest of corrections — brother, do not, for shade thou art and shade beholdest. The canto's whole arc is the slow approach to a recognition the reader has been waiting for, delayed by Dante for nearly a hundred lines so that the deepest literary tribute in the Commedia could be delivered in absentia.
The doctrine of the trembling mountain
What XX withheld, XXI delivers. The doctrine has three parts. First, the mountain cannot tremble in its lower regions — below the gate, where the late-repentants of Ante-Purgatory wait outside the proper terraces. This is because the lower mountain belongs still to the natural order; only the purgatorial mountain proper, where supernatural penance is at work, has the supernatural capacity to register a soul's release.
Second, the mountain trembles for only one cause: when a soul has completed its purgation and is freed to ascend. No wind, no earth-tremor, no rain, no natural cause can shake the mountain above the gate. The trembling is the mountain's own celebration of the freeing of one of its souls.
Third, and this is the canto's most beautiful detail, the cause of the trembling is the soul itself. The soul does not announce its release; it does not request permission; it does not wait for a higher signal. It feels itself ready — feels, in the canto's exact word, itself pure — and at that instant finds itself moving upward of its own free will. The mountain registers the movement as a tremor. The will, when it is genuinely converted, cannot be held. It is precisely the doctrine of the threshold of assent from canto XVIII brought to its triumphant inverse: at the bottom of the climb, the will was educated about consenting to disordered loves; at the top of every purgation, the will simply moves toward the good without further deliberation. The soul itself is the cause of the earthquake, and the earthquake is the universe's recognition that a will has been wholly restored.
The corollary the canto draws explicitly is one of the Commedia's great doctrines about freedom. The will alone makes it certain. No soul on the mountain leaves a terrace because anyone tells it to; no soul leaves because the time is up; no soul leaves because a quota has been reached. The soul leaves when it is ready, by its own measure. Five hundred years can pass for one penitent, fifty for another, five for a third. The mountain runs on the calendar of the inner life.
Statius and the secret Christianity reserved
Statius's self-introduction in this canto is calibrated to reveal exactly half of what he is. He names himself as the Roman poet of the Thebaid and the unfinished Achilleid, born in Toulouse, who fell with his second burden — that is, died while writing the Achilleid. He names the Aeneid as the mother and nurse of his poetry. He does not yet name himself as a Christian. The revelation of his secret conversion, and of the precise mechanism by which Virgil's Fourth Eclogue converted him to Christianity without ever knowing he had done so, is reserved for the next canto. XXI gives us Statius the poet; XXII will give us Statius the Christian.
The historical invention is one of the Commedia's most consequential. The real Statius died around AD 96 a pagan; no source connects him to early Christianity. Dante invents the conversion in order to make Virgil — the pagan whose Eclogue IV had been read for a thousand years as a prefiguring of Christ's birth — the instrumental cause of a Christian's salvation. The doctrine the invention serves is one of the most generous in medieval Christianity: that pagan literature can be a vehicle of grace even when its author does not know that it is. Virgil, in Limbo, never knew he had saved anyone. Statius, on the mountain, will tell him, in XXII, that he did. The dramatic irony is the most poignant in the cantica.
The five-hundred-plus years Statius declares he has spent on the terrace of avarice deserves a brief gloss. Dante does not, in this canto, specify why Statius was avaricious. He will, in XXII, give an answer that may surprise the reader. The canto leaves the question hanging — long purgation, unspecified cause, more revelation coming.
What the canto withholds and why
The canto's deepest pleasure is structural. Dante stages the encounter so that Statius delivers his greatest tribute to Virgil while standing in front of Virgil and not knowing it. The reader, who has known from the second line that the laurel-crowned shade is Virgil, watches the tribute unfold with the dramatic irony of a great theatre scene. Of the Aeneid speak I, which to me a mother was, and was my nurse in song. The line is one of the most beautiful sentences any Latin poet ever wrote about a predecessor, and Statius is delivering it to a man whose silence about his own identity is its own act of literary tact. Virgil refuses to introduce himself. The deepest gift one poet can give another — the gift of not interrupting his tribute — is the gift Virgil is giving Statius across the canto's hundred lines.
When Dante finally cannot help smiling at the irony, and Statius asks what the smile means, the resolution is delivered with maximum tact. Dante does not say this is Virgil; he says this man here who is your guide is the one whose work was your mother and nurse. The naming is left to Virgil's own laurel and to Statius's recognition. And when Statius stoops to embrace Virgil's feet, Virgil's restraining line — brother, do not, for shade thou art and shade beholdest — folds the moment into a gentle pedagogy about the conditions of the afterlife. We are shades, both of us; the embrace is impossible; let us walk together instead. It is one of the cantica's tenderest small lines, and it is delivered with the dry humour of a man who has been a shade for thirteen hundred years and has long since accepted what shades can and cannot do.
Famous and meaningful passages
The natural thirst.
The natural thirst, that ne'er is satisfied Excepting with the water for whose grace The woman of Samaria besought… (Purg. XXI.1–3)
The opening tercet. The Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in John 4 — Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not — is the canto's first image. The thirst that requires the water of life will be answered by the soul about to arrive.
The Emmaus framing.
And lo! in the same manner as Luke writeth That Christ appeared to two upon the way From the sepulchral cave already risen… (Purg. XXI.7–9)
Statius's entrance is given the iconography of Luke 24:13–32 — Christ joining the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, walking with them unrecognised. The Christological framing of a pagan poet's appearance is the canto's most audacious move.
The doctrine of the trembling.
It trembles here, whenever any soul Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it. (Purg. XXI.58–60)
The mechanism in one tercet. Tremaci quando alcuna anima monda sentesi, sì che surga o che si mova. The soul itself, by feeling itself pure, causes the mountain's tremor. The will, when it is finally free, moves of itself.
The five hundred years.
And I, who have been lying in this pain Five hundred years and more, but just now felt A free volition for a better seat. (Purg. XXI.67–69)
Statius's own purgation. Cinquecent' anni e più. The number is generous; avarice takes long to purge. The free volition for a better seat is the will's own announcement that it is finished.
The naming of the poet.
Statius the people name me still on earth; I sang of Thebes, and then of great Achilles; But on the way fell with my second burden. (Purg. XXI.91–93)
The poet's self-introduction. Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma. The two epics are named — Thebaid and unfinished Achilleid — but no claim of Christian faith is yet made.
The tribute to the Aeneid.
Of the Aeneid speak I, which to me A mother was, and was my nurse in song; Without this weighed I not a drachma's weight. (Purg. XXI.97–99)
The most beautiful tribute in any literature of one poet to another. De l'Eneïda dico, la qual mamma fummi e fummi nutrice. Mother and nurse. The poem that fed Statius into being. And it is being delivered to Virgil without Statius knowing that Virgil is there.
The smile and the signal.
I turned mine eyes…I had not turned them well But that my Master, smiling, said: It happens That every weight bend not the steady-yard. (Purg. XXI.109–111, paraphrased)
The signal Virgil gives Dante is itself a smile — sorridendo. The master cannot keep a straight face either. The exchange between teacher and pupil at the moment of dramatic irony is one of the cantica's quietest comic moments.
The recognition and the stooping.
Already he was stooping to embrace My Teacher's feet; but he said to him: Brother, Do not; for shade thou art, and shade beholdest. (Purg. XXI.130–132)
The canto's emotional climax. Frate, non far, ché tu se' ombra e ombra vedi. The impossible embrace, deferred forever. One Latin poet to another, across thirteen hundred years and the impassable medium of the shade-body.
What to watch for
Watch the next canto reveal the Christianity. XXII will give the second half of Statius's introduction: he was a secret Christian; he was converted by reading Virgil's Fourth Eclogue; his sin on the terrace of avarice was not in fact greed but its opposite — prodigality. The full portrait of Statius is given in two halves across XXI and XXII; this is the first.
Watch Statius walk with them. Statius will join Virgil and Dante for the next five cantos — through the terraces of gluttony and lust to the summit of the mountain. The pilgrim now has two guides, one pagan and one Christian, and the doctrinal passages of the upper cantos will be divided between them.
Watch the Aeneid line return. La qual mamma fummi e fummi nutrice will be quoted, paraphrased, and echoed throughout the rest of the cantica. It is the canto's seed-line and the Commedia's deepest single tribute from poet to poet.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.