Purgatorio - Dante Alighieri

Thus, if the present world has gone astray, in you is the cause, in you it's to be sought; and now I'll serve as your true exegete.

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Issuing from His hands, the soul-on which He thought with love before creating it- is like a child who weeps and laughs in sport;

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that soul is simple, unaware; but since a joyful Maker gave it motion, it turns willingly to things that bring delight.

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At first it savors trivial goods; these would beguile the soul, and it runs after them, unless there's guide or rein to rule its love.

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Therefore, one needed law to serve as curb; a ruler, too, was needed, one who could discern at least the tower of the true city.

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I have an unfortunate habit of letting my approach to reading grow stale and rote, where finishing one book and starting another is more often than not merely accompanied by a sigh of resignation. That's not to say I don't enjoy the books I read; it is simply to say that I do not enjoy them immensely. Partly, this has to do with a reluctance to give each book the time it probably deserves. My list of books to be read is usually (save for vacations--see below) made up of books that have passed the test of time, justified by the fact that there is, after all, only so much time, and I will only read so many books in my life, so the books I choose to read might as well for the most part be books against which I can test my reader's mettle. Thus, each book could (and probably should) deserve more than a passing glance of my critical eye. And yet... sometimes I am simply not up to it, and so I pass on to the next book on the list, somewhat ashamed, but determined nonetheless to keep moving forward, and only every once in a while do I feel a certain sinking make-work feeling. And then there are times when I pick up a book, by accident or design, and it revives that thrill of reading that seems to come so rarely these days.

This book, perhaps predictably, gave me one of those thrills. I'd avoided reading it for a long time (and the only reason I picked it up was because I was avoiding Henry James), primarily because I thought it had to--had to!--suffer from that Miltonian flaw: how could anything compare with the description of hell? Sinners just have a lot more going on. But there really is no comparison, either between Milton and Dante, or between Hell and Purgatory, and perhaps the urge to compare and say which one is better is indicative of a childish view of literature, reading, history, etc. Suffice it to say, Hell and Purgatory are inseparable, complementary, as I imagine, now, that Paradiso is to the work as a whole.

As to why it thrills, I guess it isn't enough to say, Just read it! There is, on the one hand, how it enhances my appreciation of Inferno. Sure. Fine. But it is at root the sheer conceptual scope that amazes. And, as in all things literary, no matter that the ideas are wrong or that you find yourself in disagreement with them, it is the presentation that is the point of it all, and here it's as if philosophy and theology were built a cathedral on the wings of poetry. And its success--in description, in meaning, in thrilling--is primarily that while the ideas and, ultimately, the point of the books is the ascension to heaven, while that is where Dante the wandering soul's mind is fixed, the Dante that is the author of the fiction has the reader as his object, and his poetry, despite singing the glory of god, defines the glory of the human mind, and takes the reader along for the ride.