Dialectoc Composition In Purgatorio V

Dialectoc Composition In Purgatorio V

In this canto there appear to be none of those cruces on which contemporary criticism often fastens as basic for the understanding of the poem's deeper meaning. It nevertheless contains some of the most vivid episodes of the journey, especially in its second part, involving the stories of three memorable characters.

As is characteristic of the whole cantica, and is especially evident in the first cantos, we find that the three souls we meet here are, by the very definition of their realm, in a liminal state between two forms of existence, the earthly and the celestial. They are gradually shedding the prejudices and passions that had made them cling to the illusory goods of their earthly existence, and getting ready, through their painful purgation, for the permanent bliss to come. We shall see how, by the very progression that distinguishes them among themselves, the three main characters are increasingly detached from the worldly values and increasingly ready for the final step.

In one of the more recent «lecturae» Giambattista Salinari (1969, 311 and 313f) finds that this canto is marked by a high degree of lyricism, considering the progression of the three generic ingredients of the whole poem, namely the descriptive (or epic), the dramatic, and the lyric. He also stresses here the particularly conspicuous presence of what he calls the three types of «contrappunto» in which Dante excels, namely the «horizontal» (when contrasting episodes are juxtaposed for the sake of variation and emphasis), the «vertical» (when over several characters the same situation or theme is developed through rising tonalities), and finally the «stylistic» (when in the same episode the epic or narrative element is expressed through elegiac description, the dramatic through dialogue, and the lyric through monologue). This is, in short exposition, an interesting analytic point that concerns a striking yet little noticed feature of Dante's method of composition, and which this writer has attempted to define and analyze under the term of «dialectic composition».

The structure of Purgatorio V leans, as it were, backward and forward, tying in with the conclusion of the episode of the lazy in the preceding canto and then concluding the episode of the violently slain, who properly occupy this canto, in the following canto, when the same group continues to crowd around Dante in order to secure prayers on their behalf from the living.