65 pages • 2 hours read
Dante AlighieriPurgatorio
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1316A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Cantos 32-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Canto 32 Summary
Dante focuses on seeing everything that his eyes can take in, despite being momentarily blinded as by a bright sun. When his eyes refocus, he sees the chariot turn towards the sun, preparing to march east. Matelda stations herself next to the chariot’s wheels, and the Gryphon carries its burden without losing a single feather. Statius and Dante follow Matelda as the procession moves.
The procession marches through an empty grove to the measure of “angel song,” halts in front of a leafless tree, and then circles the tree, chanting “Blessed are you, the Gryphon. With your beak/you do not spoil this wood, so sweet to taste./For, after tasting, bellies writhe, all sick” (310). The Gryphon says, “In this way, all that’s true and just is saved” (310), and ties the tree to the chariot. As trees on earth swell with leaves under the sun, so the tree in Eden bursts with new leaves, “more than violet and […] less than rose” (310).
The hymn is too beautiful for Dante to comprehend. He falls asleep, comparing his intense drowsiness to that imposed on Argus by Syrinx’s story and to the disciples Peter, James, and John who were present at Christ’s transfiguration. When Dante wakes, Matelda is present, but Dante asks where Beatrice is. Matelda points to where Beatrice sits alone beneath the newly flowering tree, as if guarding it. The seven ladies circle around her holding lights. She tells Dante that he will eventually be an eternal citizen “in that New Rome where Christ is Roman too” (312). She instructs him, when he returns to earth, to write down everything he has seen to help others become more virtuous.
Dante witnesses seven attacks on the tree and chariot. First, an eagle rips the bark, leaves, and flowers off the tree, then strikes the chariot with full force, causing it to lurch. Next, a vixen throws herself at the chariot, but Beatrice chases her off. The eagle returns to feather the chariot. A voice cries out from Heaven, “My little ship, what ill load weighs you down!” (312). Next, a dragon emerges from under the ground and pierces the chariot with its tail, then removes it like a wasp pulling out its stinger and wanders away. The chariot transforms into a seven-headed monster. Finally, “a loose-wrapped whore” (313) and a giant appear, and kiss. When the woman looks at Dante, the giant whips her. He leads the beast through the woods, which forms a shield “between the whore and weird new beast and me” (313).
Canto 33 Summary
The seven ladies weep and chant a hymn. Beatrice sends them ahead, then gestures to Statius, Matelda, and Dante to follow. She invites Dante to speak, but he is quiet with reverence, as are people who fear raising their voices to their superiors. Beatrice instructs Dante to “unknot” himself from “dream and shame alike” (315).
Beatrice then explains that the serpent broke the chariot, but none can avoid God’s vengeance. The eagle first was a monster, then prey, and will not be without an heir forever. She prophesies a time when God’s messenger will “slay that thief—/the giant, too, whom she makes mischief with” (315). She acknowledges that her narrative may not convince Dante’s intellect, but events to come will free him from “this enigmatic knot” (315), as the Naiades solved the Sphinx’s riddle.
Beatrice tells Dante to write down her words to bring as a sign for the living. He should tell the living how he saw the tree stripped of its leaves and bark. To steal or tear the tree is blasphemy against God. Beatrice sees that Dante’s intellect struggles to follow her meaning. He asks her why her word “so much longed for, take its flight/so that the more it strives it loses more?” (316). She wants Dante to recognize how far his ways are “from the ways of God” (316). Dante cannot recall ever being estranged from her, and she reminds him that he has drunk from Lethe’s waters.
Beatrice tells Dante that she must be direct with him now. She instructs Matelda to lead Dante to the river Eunoe, which will restore to him the memories of his good deeds. She invites Statius to come with them. Dante would write more about the sweetness of the river’s waters, but “since the pages now are full […] the reigns of art won’t let me pass beyond” (318). Refreshed, he prepares to “rise towards the stars” (318).
Cantos 32-33 Analysis
These cantos involve layers of allegory. Canto 32 represents history and its gradual unfolding of divine truth. In Canto 33, Beatrice addresses the limitations of the intellect to perceive the divine, and speaks directly to Dante’s purpose as a poet, in the process explaining the form Purgatorio takes.
At the beginning of Canto 32, the procession marches through the grove toward the tree of knowledge, from which Eve ate a forbidden apple at Satan’s urging, thus the phrase “so sweet to taste” (310). The Gryphon’s statement—“In this way, all that’s true and just is saved” (310)—expresses Christ’s redemption of humanity. As the Gryphon ties the chariot (representing the church) to the tree (representing knowledge), the tree spontaneously grows leaves of red and violet, colors that symbolize Christ’s love/charity and justice, respectively. This symbolic act also identifies the church’s proper role as humanity’s spiritual guide. This portion of the canto, therefore, signifies the fall and atonement of humanity.
As Dante hears a hymn of unspeakable beauty, sleep overcomes him, again symbolic of his submission. Dante compares his overwhelming need to sleep both to pagan and Christian figures. The Syrinx’s story refers to a Greco-Roman myth recounted in Ovid in which Zeus/Jupiter transforms his lover Io into a cow to hide her from his wife Hera/Juno. Hera/Juno takes the cow to her sacred grove so that Argus, the creature with 100 eyes, can guard it. Zeus/Jupiter instructs Hermes/Mercury to kill Argus and release Io. To do so, Hermes/Mercury tells the story of the Syrinx, who Artemis/Diana turned into reed pipes to help her escape the god Pan. Argus falls asleep listening to this story, and Hermes/Mercury kills him. Dante also compares himself to Christ’s three disciples—Peter, James, and John—when Christ brings them with him to a mountain, an event related in the gospels. As Christ prays, sleep overcomes his three disciplines. They then awake to find him transformed by the Holy Spirit. By comparing himself to the figures in these two stories, Dante highlights how both pagan and Christian narratives can resonate. The pagan myth speaks to the importance of remaining vigilant while the biblical story emphasizes submission to the divine. Together, the two stories show the dual potential of submission. As with love, whether submission is good or bad depends on the context.
The seven attacks on the tree and chariot in the final part of the canto represent the attacks against the Church, beginning with persecution under the pagan Roman Empire through to contemporary rulers and popes who Dante believes have corrupted the Church.
Specifically, the eagle attack may refer to Roman Emperor Nero’s persecutions, as the eagle is a symbol of the Roman Empire. The vixen may represent early Christian heretics. Likewise, the dragon may indicate Dante’s beliefs that Roman Emperor Constantine, who Christianized the empire, was also responsible for confusing spiritual with secular power, represented by the chariot and feathers respectively. The chariot’s transformation into a monster may refer to the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD, as the Church believed Mohammed a heretic who divided believers, hence the chariot’s splintering. The voice crying out from Heaven, “My little ship, what ill load weighs you down!” (312), could refer to the further confusion of spiritual and secular power under Kings Pepin and Charlemagne, who granted land and property to the church. The transformation of the chariot into a seven-headed monster appears to be a reference to Revelation 13, which describes a beast rising out of the sea. Finally, scholars believe “the whore” to represent the whore of Babylon from Revelation 17, and the giant may signify what Dante saw as an unholy alliance between popes and France that briefly moved the papacy to Avignon, France.
In Canto 33, Beatrice seems to respond to the historical events alluded to in Canto 32, and prophecy punishment for the corrupt and restoration of the proper order. She recognizes the limits of the intellect to perceive the divine, and charges Dante with writing down everything he has seen and experienced as a message for the living. Her statement that the intellect alone is insufficient reflects Dante’s poetic form. He incorporates sensory language, dense allusions, symbolic language, and cryptic references that demand readers engage all their faculties—sensory, intellectual, imaginative—when reading his poem. Even then, certain meanings remain elusive. This reflects Dante’s own position when approaching the divine. He recognizes that he must use all his faculties and that it will still not be enough. Humans cannot fully perceive and understand the divine.
Accepting this state of humanity, Dante prepares to leave Purgatory behind and “rise towards the stars” (318), meaning ascend to Heaven.
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By Dante Alighieri
