Purgatorio · Canto XXVIII ·
Purgatorio XXVIII — The Divine Forest
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 62 of 100 · Purgatorio, Canto XXVIII
Before reading
The summit of the mountain. The pilgrim, now sovereign over himself by Virgil's coronation, walks into the divina foresta spessa e viva — the dense and living forest that is the Earthly Paradise. This is the garden of Eden, restored. A river crosses it. On the far side a woman is walking, alone, gathering flowers.
Where the canto sits
The hundred cantos of the Commedia divide into three thirty-three-line cantos plus an introductory one. The Earthly Paradise — cantos XXVIII to XXXIII of Purgatorio — is the axis of the poem: the centre between Hell-and-Mountain on one side and Heaven on the other. The whole Inferno and most of Purgatorio have been removing what should not be in the soul; the whole Paradiso will be adding what should be. The Earthly Paradise is the threshold between subtraction and addition. Six cantos for the transition — for the meeting with Matelda, the pageant of the Church, the arrival of Beatrice, the confession, the political vision, the drinking of Eunoë.
What it helps to know
The garden the pilgrim enters is the original Eden — Adam and Eve's garden, lifted to the summit of the mountain at the moment of the Fall (the Commedia's cosmology places it on a mountain in the southern hemisphere, antipodes to Jerusalem). The garden is therefore the garden, the singular one. Its features will be doctrinally explained in this canto by the woman who walks in it.
The woman is Matelda. Dante never gives her a surname or a biography; later commentators have argued for the Countess Matilda of Tuscany (1046–1115, the great supporter of the Hieronymite reform and Gregory VII), or for some unnamed figure of contemplative life, or for a personification of the active life from Dante's own circle. The poem leaves the question open. Read her here as she presents herself: a woman alone in a garden, gathering flowers, who knows the place and is willing to explain.
The river at the canto's centre is one of the two rivers of the garden. Matelda will name them at the canto's close: Lethe (which removes memory of sin) and Eunoë (which restores memory of every good deed). The two together complete the work begun by penance on the seven cornices. The pilgrim will drink from both before leaving Purgatory. Lethe in canto XXXI, Eunoë in canto XXXIII.
The mention of Proserpina in the canto's central simile is precise. Proserpina was the daughter of Ceres, taken from her by Dis while she was gathering flowers in the meadow of Enna. The simile — thou makest me remember where and what Proserpina that moment was when lost her mother her, and she herself the Spring — places the meeting of Dante and Matelda inside a mythological frame in which a woman is gathering flowers and a man finds her. The frame is set up to be inverted: Proserpina lost the Spring; this meeting begins a season.
A small note on the air. Matelda will explain that the wind that moves the leaves of the garden is not generated by exhalations from earth and water (as on the lower slopes) but by the primal motion of the heavens themselves — the rotation of the celestial spheres striking the garden directly because it stands above the lower atmosphere. The garden is, in the cosmology of the canto, a place where the physical and the celestial meet directly without weather intervening.
What to read for
Notice the canto's first sound. The pilgrim hears the leaves and birds before he sees anyone — a chorus of birds singing in the leaves so densely that with full ravishment they receive the hour of prime. The Earthly Paradise has birds. Hell had no birds; Purgatory had had almost none. Listen for the change in the soundscape.
Notice how Matelda is introduced. She is singing and culling floweret after floweret. She names herself only later, only on request, and only in passing. The poem is teaching the reader that the appearance of a woman in a garden is itself the announcement.
Listen for the river. The pilgrim is on one bank; Matelda is on the other. Apart three paces did the river make us; but Hellespont, where Xerxes passed across… more hatred from Leander did not suffer. The longing to cross the river is figured by classical longing-across-water. The pilgrim cannot cross it yet. Beatrice, in canto XXXI, will drag him across it; the river is the symbol of the gap between his unredeemed memory and the cleansed one he is about to receive.
Listen for the canto's last gesture. Matelda finishes her exposition, looks at Virgil and Statius behind Dante, and sees them smiling. The smile is the small last warmth of Virgil's company before he disappears.
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 pilgrim entered the garden at the top of the mountain. He walked across a level meadow under tall trees in which birds sang, came to a river, looked across, and saw a woman alone gathering flowers. She crossed half the distance to him, spoke, explained the wind, the water, the seedless trees and the two rivers of the place. Her name, given quickly and without weight, is Matelda. By the end of the canto the doctrine of the Earthly Paradise has been laid out and the two ancient poets behind the pilgrim have been seen to smile at her closing reference to the golden age. The action is small; the canto is the most spacious in the Purgatorio.
The garden against the dark wood
The first canto of the Inferno opened in a wood. Selva oscura — dark, tangled, leafless, threatening, lost. This canto opens in another wood. Foresta divina spessa e viva — divine, dense, living, fragrant, breathing. The pair is deliberate. The whole Commedia has been a movement from the first wood to the second, and the second canto of the Earthly Paradise (this one is the first) will set Beatrice down on a chariot in the second wood the way the first canto set the three beasts loose in the first. Two woods, two beginnings; the same pilgrim now sovereign over his own will. The poem is finishing what canto I started.
There is a smaller correspondence worth carrying forward. In canto I the pilgrim could not climb the hill because three beasts blocked the way; here he walks the garden with no obstacle at all because every beast of appetite has been left at one of the cornices below. The contrast is structural: the Inferno was the diagnosis of why the climb failed; the Purgatorio was the cure; the Earthly Paradise is the small living interval in which the cure has worked.
Matelda and the question the poem leaves open
Matelda is named only in canto XXXIII (Beatrice calls her by name there for the first time). In this canto she is a lady all alone, who went along singing and culling floweret after floweret. She is the first ungrieving figure the pilgrim has met since canto I. She knows the garden, knows the wind, knows the rivers, knows the philosophical theology of the place, and explains all of it without urgency or weight. She has the office that Virgil has held for sixty-one cantos — guide — but with no severity and no fear of failure.
The identity has been disputed for seven hundred years. The four main candidates: the Countess Matilda of Tuscany (d. 1115), the great patron of the eleventh-century reform papacy; Mechtild of Hackeborn or Mechtild of Magdeburg, the German visionaries; an unnamed early love of Dante's; or a personification, with the dream of canto XXVII already establishing her as the active life. The Commedia permits all four; none of them dissolves the others. The most useful reading is the poem's own reading: she is the gardener of the Earthly Paradise, and her name is enough.
A reading that the canto allows but does not insist on: the introduction of Matelda as a singing woman gathering flowers in a meadow deliberately invokes Proserpina at the moment of her abduction by Dis, and the canto names the comparison in line 50. The Proserpina frame is set up to be inverted. Proserpina was taken from her mother and the Spring; Matelda is being given, by Dante to his reader, as the lady who restores what was lost. The active life in the dream rehearsed her; the garden lets her appear.
The cosmology of the garden, plainly
Matelda gives the pilgrim three explanations that are, in the Commedia's scheme, the cosmology of the Earthly Paradise:
The wind. The breeze in the leaves is not generated by exhalations from earth or water, as on the lower slopes; the mountain rises above the disturbed atmosphere. The wind here is the primal motion — the rotation of the celestial spheres — striking the high garden directly because there is nothing between it and them. The garden is the only place on earth where the air moves by direct contact with the heavens.
The trees. The plants of the garden bear every seed; their seeds are carried by the wind around the whole circle of the earth, and from them every species on the lower slopes is generated. Strange plants found on earth without visible cause are the seeds of the Earthly Paradise that have wandered down. The garden is the origin of the world's flora.
The water. The two rivers do not come from rain condensed by cold; they come from a single fountain safe and certain which is replenished and discharged by the will of God. The fountain has two outlets. The water on one side, Lethe, takes away memory of sin. The water on the other side, Eunoë, restores memory of every good deed. And worketh not if first on either side it be not tasted. The two rivers are not optional. To leave Purgatory you drink them both.
The garden is therefore not a symbol of innocence in this canto; it is the physical site where the conditions of Eden still obtain — celestial wind, seedless trees, two rivers of memory and grace. The doctrine is set out as botany and meteorology because in this poem doctrine is botany and meteorology.
The smile at the end
Matelda's closing line is a small kindness to the pagans. Those who in ancient times have feigned in song the Age of Gold and its felicity, dreamed of this place perhaps upon Parnassus. Here was the human race in innocence; here evermore was Spring, and every fruit; this is the nectar of which each one speaks. The classical golden age of Ovid, Virgil and Hesiod is generously accommodated to the Christian Eden: the poets dreamed of this place even though they had no name for it. Dante turns to his two ancient guides and sees that with a smile they had been listening to these closing words. The smile is Virgil's; it is the last expression of his that the canto records.
The kindness of Matelda's gloss is the kindness the Commedia extends to its pagan teachers everywhere. The orthodox theological position would have been that the pagan poets were dreaming nothing — that the golden age was a literary commonplace with no real referent. Matelda's gloss permits them more than that. Dreamed of this place concedes them a true intuition under a false name. The smile of Virgil is the smile of a man who has spent a hundred cantos receiving more honour than orthodox theology owed him.
Famous and meaningful passages
The divine forest.
Eager already to search in and round The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, Which tempered to the eyes the new-born day, Withouten more delay I left the bank, Taking the level country slowly, slowly Over the soil that everywhere breathes fragrance. (Purg. XXVIII.1–6)
The Earthly Paradise announced as a forest. The opposite of the selva oscura of canto I — divine, living, fragrant, level.
The lady alone.
A lady all alone, who went along Singing and culling floweret after floweret, With which her pathway was all painted over. (Purg. XXVIII.40–42)
The first thing the canto says about Matelda. A woman gathering flowers in a meadow. The narrative occupies the entire centre of the poem.
The river that hides nothing.
All waters that on earth most limpid are Would seem to have within themselves some mixture Compared with that which nothing doth conceal, Although it moves on with a brown, brown current Under the shade perpetual, that never Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon. (Purg. XXVIII.28–33)
Lethe described without being named. The water that nothing doth conceal will, paradoxically, be the water that conceals everything of the pilgrim's sinning past.
The Proserpina simile.
Thou makest me remember where and what Proserpina that moment was when lost Her mother her, and she herself the Spring. (Purg. XXVIII.49–51)
The classical frame that the canto sets up to be inverted.
The doctrine of the rivers.
Upon this side with virtue it descends, Which takes away all memory of sin; On that, of every good deed done restores it. Here Lethe, as upon the other side Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not If first on either side it be not tasted. (Purg. XXVIII.127–132)
The two rivers named for the first time. Both are required; neither alone is enough.
The kindness to the ancients.
Those who in ancient times have feigned in song The Age of Gold and its felicity, Dreamed of this place perhaps upon Parnassus. Here was the human race in innocence; Here evermore was Spring, and every fruit; This is the nectar of which each one speaks. (Purg. XXVIII.139–144)
The Christian Eden and the classical Golden Age allowed to overlap. The pagan poets dreamed this place.
The smile.
Then backward did I turn me wholly round Unto my Poets, and saw that with a smile They had been listening to these closing words. (Purg. XXVIII.145–147)
The last expression of Virgil's face the canto records. He is still here; he is smiling; he is about to be gone.
What to watch for
Watch the river. Dante is on the wrong side of it, and the next four cantos will spend their drama on the cost of getting across. Beatrice does not come to him; Matelda will drag him to her.
Watch the pageant. The next canto will be the great mystical procession of the Church — candlesticks, elders, four living creatures, a chariot drawn by a Griffin. Matelda will become its silent attendant. The reading-rhythm of the cantos turns from spacious to crowded.
Watch the verb smile. Beatrice will smile at the pilgrim more often than any other figure in the Commedia once she arrives; the last record of Virgil's smile is in this canto.
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.