The Garden of Eden in Dante’s Purgatory is somewhat different in the original compared to most English translations.
In Dante’s Italian it becomes more of an expression of the transformed life, and the new experience of the Earthly with the Heavenly shining through, symbolically with a permanent little “breeze” from the east.
The three poets are also to some degree symbolic of the self (Pilgrim), the rebirthed soul (Statius) and the transformed rational faculty (Virgil). All three aspects are now together entering into this state of experience and perception, and the Pilgrim’s Will has been calibrated and re-oriented through the seven terraces.
Next step is to regenerate the frame of memory, in many ways the interpretative framework that shapes our perceptions. This has two steps: first to wash out the memories of sins, vice, mistaken frameworks and human internal constructs, and second, to reinforce the good memories of virtue and truth. This is one of the main overall themes of the last six cantos in Purgatorio, as we become more familiar with the new experiences of being, after finishing the terraces and a moment of touching Heavenly Love in the final wall of fire.
I love to see the blog active! A quick, present read 🙂
It’s cool to think of how the different aspects of the human personality are contained not just in the Pilgrim, but in his companions as well!
Thank you, Sean! 😀
I think we’ll be blogging about the last part of Purgatorio here in the coming few weeks! The final celebration!
And yes;
the Pilgrim is somewhat of a mystery sometimes – he is not always the “whole person”, as the soul and the reason are “separated out” of sorts. Which is partly why Dante writes so explicitly that all three – one by one – have to go on the ledge on level 7 and through the wall of fire too. You have all three aspects within yourself, as individual parts and unified!