Original subtitles

♪

Narrator as Dante: O reader, do not ask of me

how I grew faint and frozen.

I cannot write it: all words

would fall far short of what it was.

♪

I did not die, and I was not alive;

think for yourself, if you have any wit,

what I became, deprived of life and death.

♪

Webb: As Dante was finishing the "Inferno,"

which was just the first part of

his 3-part epic poem, the "Commedia,"

he'd been in exile for almost 7 years,

forced from his beloved city of Florence, homeless.

♪

Being exiled in Dante's time

is something we really can't comprehend fully now.

[Thunder]

Within the gates of the city was security.

Alone, lost and uprooted, vulnerable,

Dante had to keep moving,

and the "Commedia," his guide through the afterlife.

It is because of his exile we get the gift of this poem,

but it's a very painful condition from which he writes.

♪

[Wind blowing]

♪

Narrator: By the spring of 1307,

6 Easters had come and gone

since Dante's exile had begun.

6 years of wandering, impoverished, unmoored--

far from family and home, at constant risk.

An itinerant beggar, he wrote,

forced to rely on the mercy of the lords

of the Tuscan high country for protection,

and consumed now with the creation of a vast poem

unlike anything that had ever been written before--

a poem which, he hoped, if he could only

find a way to finish it, might serve to confirm

his greatness as a writer

and provide him with a passport

which might carry him triumphantly home.

♪

The poem itself told of a fateful and phantasmagorical journey

Dante had undertaken 6 years earlier,

in the spring of 1300, before his woeful exile had begun--

a journey that would take him through

the 3 realms of the underworld and afterlife--

from darkness to redemption.

♪

A journey that had itself started,

with haunting specificity,

3 days before Easter-- in the early hours of

April 8th, 1300--

in the terrible darkness, anguish,

and despair of Good Friday.

♪

Bruscagli: In the "Divine Comedy," there's this crossing

between the individual life of Dante

and the collective life of Christianity.

Because the week of Easter, which goes from

the passion and crucifixion of Christ

to his resurrection,

is the crucial moment of the Catholic faith,

the moment where you go from the bottom

of destitution and desperation

to the peak of hope and happiness.

♪

In this sense, the "Comedy" reflects what happens

during the week of Easter, which goes from

the abyss of death and abandonment

to the resurrection, to the new life of Easter Sunday.

♪

Narrator: Every spring, at Easter time in particular,

the pain of his situation came over him acutely,

along with an enormous longing to go home,

to return to the city that had spurned him,

to the great baptistry of St. John--

the center of all that was good in Florence, for Dante--

the beating heart of all hope and love and renewal...

♪

a place that he wished to return to

almost as much as he longed to find some way back

to the haunting beautiful Florentine girl

he had loved passionately since childhood,

and who had died more than 15 years earlier--Beatrice.

♪

Webb: For Dante, the notion of returning to Florence

is something that looms so large for him.

You know, he talks about going back to

the baptistry of Florence, but already in terms where

we know he suspects that may not be possible.

♪

Timothy Verdon: When Dante speaks of the baptistry,

he calls it "his beautiful San Giovanni"--

"il bel San Giovanni."

♪

The baptistry was the most magnificent building

in the city of Florence

and, perhaps, in all of Tuscany.

And Dante speaks of it as a place of identity.

♪

Dante's great ancestor, Cacciaguida,

in the "Divine Comedy" very specifically says,

"In this place I became, at the same time,

Cacciaguida and a Christian."

He might have added, "I also became a Florentine,"

because all children born in Florence

were brought here to be baptized.

No other church had the privilege of being

able to give the sacrament of baptism.

And Florentines returned to this building

on any number of important occasions.

♪

Every year, in Dante's time,

on the day when the church remembers

the death of Christ, Good Friday,

in Florence, all house fires were extinguished.

♪

The city went dark and cold on Good Friday

and would remain so for two days, until Holy Saturday,

the day before Christ's resurrection.

♪

And when they begin to celebrate

the signs of his resurrection,

here in the baptistry, in the afternoon of Holy Saturday,

they lit a bonfire inside the baptistry.

♪

If we imagine for a moment on what might be

a dark spring day, a bonfire whose flames

illuminate the glittering gold background mosaics

and the then-gleaming marbles,

and from that bonfire then,

the flame for the Easter candle--the pastoral candle,

which symbolizes Christ's resurrection--was taken,

and from that same bonfire, the heads of

all Florentines families came, with little buckets,

to take ardent coals

to take them to their homes,

to again light the fires that would

make it possible to cook,

to end the fast that began on Good Friday.

And so, the light and heat and warm food,

with which Florentines lived all year,

came from a fire that had been illuminated

in this place of baptism

where, as children, they had been inducted

into the hope of eternal life.

♪

This was a refining fire. It was a vital fire.

It was, in some way, a symbol of

the fire of the Holy Spirit, which consumes sin

and which makes us, as it were, flaming torches,

giving light and truth to others.

♪

[Wind blowing]

Narrator: Sometime in the spring of 1307,

as the exiled poet made his way east

towards the protection of new patrons at Casentino,

the unfinished manuscript of "Inferno"

in a satchel on his back,

Dante found himself, not for the first time, as he wrote,

"in a flash of lightning"--

lovestruck, and all but overwhelmed

by the beauty of a woman he chanced to encounter

somewhere along the streams of the Arno--

a brief if wild storm of tempestuous feeling

of the kind he had long sought to master,

which would come back to haunt him

before he came to the end

of the next part of his poem--"Purgatorio."

Barolini: Dante was famous for lust.

That's how the early biographers talk about him.

His poems before the "Comedia"

are among the most erotic poems that have ever been written.

I actually think this was a man

of enormous erotic life.

So, in terms of what he struggled with,

I don't know with precision--certainly pride--

but I think it did have more to do with passion.

♪

Narrator: It was summertime, in all likelihood,

when he neared Casentino and the headwaters of the Arno,

and finally came under the refuge of Count Guido Salvatico,

at the castle of Poppi.

♪

It was there, as he settled into his new haven,

that Dante would soon begin to step in his mind

up the first luminous terraces of the mountain of Purgatory

on a journey that would lead to the very top of the world

and thence on to the farthest reaches of Heaven.

♪

Adoyo: As Virgil and Dante emerge out of Inferno

and end up on the shores of Purgatory,

they're realizing that now they're in Easter Sunday,

the moment of resurrection, the re-emergence...

and they're re-emerging into the realm of penitence.

♪

I like to think of Purgatorio as a realm of hope.

Inferno had been the realm of no hope.

Purgatorio is a realm of hope. Why?

Because with the purging of the sins,

then one ends up in the realm of salvation, in Heaven.

I think that one of the things that is in Dante

is a tension between

what human beings are in their worst moments,

and what they can aspire to be.

And this is part of what makes the "Purgatorio" so moving,

is to see people who are still part of their old lives,

but are now becoming better.

Or they're better versions of themselves.

♪

Ledda: In the first canto of "Purgatorio,"

the first thing that Dante sees is the sky before the dawn.

And he says, "Sweet color of eastern sapphires--

dolce color d'oriental zaffiro."

Narrator: As Dante and Virgil stood in silent wonder

at the foot of the mountain on Purgatory's rocky shore,

their gaze was drawn to a solitary figure

standing at the mountain's foot,

looking with stern perplexity at the living being before him

and his phantom companion.

♪

[Thunder]

It was the guardian and gate-keeper of Purgatory--

Cato of Utica-- a Roman Senator

who had committed suicide

46 years before the birth of Christ,

so dedicated to the freedom of Republican Rome

that he had stabbed himself in the bowels

rather than submit to a life of slavery

under the tyranny of Caesar.

♪

Bruscagli: Cato is the guardian of Purgatory.

Cato was a pagan and committed suicide.

So, why is he there?

Because he chose to sacrifice his life

not to become a servant of Caesar.

So, he is there as a champion of liberty.

♪

Who are you--who, against the hidden river,

were able to escape the eternal prison?...

Who was your guide? when, you were set free?

The laws of the abyss-- have they been broken?

♪

Virgil: I do not come through my own self.

♪

There was a lady sent from Heaven.

Her pleas led me to help and guide this man...

♪

Ledda: Dante in the beginning of "Purgatorio" is described

by Virgil as one who is searching for freedom.

"Purgatorio" is the voyage to freedom--

freedom from vice, from sin.

Now may it please you to approve his coming;

he goes in search of liberty--

so precious, as he who gives his life for it must know.

[Wind blowing]

...Go then; but first

wind a smooth rush around his waist and bathe his face,

to wash away all of Hell's stains;

for it would not be seemly

to approach with eyes still dimmed by any mists,...

the first custodian angel, one from Paradise.

♪

Narrator: As Cato finished speaking,

a light of dazzling whiteness

approached from across the sea.

It was a winged angel of God--

ushering a boatload bearing more than 100 new spirits

to the shore where Virgil and Dante stood.

♪

And with that, Cato bid them start

the long and arduous journey up the mountain towards Heaven.

♪

The ascent of Purgatory had begun.

♪

Bruscagli: The realm of Purgatory

is really Dante's invention--

from a theological, moral, psychological,

and even topographical point of view.

♪

Christianity had always known--more or less--

that there was a Hell--

a dark, underground realm, horrific place,

reserved for the unrepentant sinners,

and that there was a Paradise--

a beautiful place in the heavenly empyrean

destined for the eternal happiness of the good.

But what about Purgatory?

Did a place called Purgatory actually exist?

And if so, where was it, and for what purpose?

Purgatory really was not a very well defined place

before Dante got his hands on it.

So, there's this very odd way in which

this literary figure had an immense influence

over the ways that Catholic doctrine

got depicted from then on.

♪

Narrator: As Dante the pilgrim would soon discover,

with Virgil at his side, the steeply rising

rock-strewn terraces of Purgatory,

on the other side of the world,

mirrored in reverse

the 9 descending circles of Hell...

ascending from more grievous sins, now repented,

in the lower terraces--

pride, envy, wrath, and sloth--

to less grievous ones further up--

avarice, gluttony, and, finally, lust.

But where the souls in Hell were fixed for all eternity

in the circle to which they had been assigned,

the penitent souls in Purgatory

were in constant movement up.

And where time did not exist

in the eternal hopeless darkness of Hell,

Purgatory existed in the same temporal realm

as the human world itself,

moved by the same shifting winds,

illuminated by the same shifting light

of sun, moon, and stars.

♪

Bruscagli: The mountain of Purgatory according to Dante

is a part of the earth's landscape.

It is something that exists on the surface of our planet.

And that's why Purgatory seems

like an extension of human life.

Dante goes to sleep in Purgatory and dreams.

So, Purgatory really is a restoration

of this almost biological rhythm of human life.

Ledda: In "Purgatorio," the souls are there--

but not eternally, temporarily, for a time.

They have to move to the next terrace.

So, there is also a journey, a pilgrimage.

The journey of the life continues.

Purgatory is the continuation of the exile

from the earthly exile to the homeland, towards God.

♪

Gragnolati: One can understand the process of Purgatory

as that which allows the soul precisely

to go out of its own obsessions.

♪

One can think of Hell as the rigidity of identity.

It's like continuing to be stuck

in one's own obsessions, in the past.

Purgatory is the therapy that allows the soul

to abandon all that rigidity.

♪

And it's the moment where the collectivity is revealed.

Souls in Purgatory help each other.

And this is really like a transformation

that helps the soul precisely to go beyond.

Webb: Throughout the "Purgatorio," in fact, we see

these groups working together.

They pray together, they speak together.

We might even think of it as a kind of a group therapy.

In "Inferno," it's as if time is frozen.

♪

Bruscagli: Purgatory is the opposite.

Everything is in movement in Purgatory.

We enter a dimension where not only time counts,

but everything revolves about

a new perception of time.

♪

Because Purgatory is ephemeral.

Purgatory is not destined to last forever.

So, it is structurally tied to the passing of time.

♪

Guy Raffa: Dante makes Purgatory into a very earthly

sort of place.

And he will meet spirits who, while they are

purifying themselves, getting ready to go to Heaven,

are still very attached to their earthly lives.

They're almost nostalgic for the lives

that they left behind, and the people that they left behind.

He really describes Purgatory as this mountain

in which spirits who are destined for Heaven,

everybody in Purgatory is saved, but they have to

purify themselves first by going through

the different levels of Purgatory

before they are ready to ascend to the stars.

♪

Narrator: On the lowermost terraces of the mountain,

as Dante imagined it, was a special zone

for souls who must wait before entering Purgatory itself.

One such soul was the first that Dante would meet--

on the mountain's second terrace--

when he encountered Manfred, a great Ghibelline soldier,

the son of Frederick the Second

and sworn enemy of the church,

who had been killed at the Battle of Benevento

and excommunicated by the pope-- not once but twice--

but who, just before dying, had surrendered to God

and been saved,

though his broken body itself had been cast out,

and buried ignominiously, never to be found.

♪

Whoever you may be, as you move forward, turn and see:

consider if beyond-- you've ever seen me.

♪

Look now.

♪

I am Manfred, the grandson of the Empress Constance;

♪

thus, I pray that, when you reach the world again,

you may go to my lovely daughter,

mother of kings of Sicily and Aragon--

♪

Tell her the truth,

lest she's been told something other.

♪

After my body had been shattered by two fatal blows,

in tears, I then consigned myself

to Him who willingly forgives.

♪

My sins were ghastly, but the Infinite Goodness

has arms so wide that It accepts

who ever would return, imploring It.

Now...rain bathes my bones,

♪

the wind has driven them beyond the Kingdom,

near the Verde's banks...

♪

but despite the Church's curse, there is no one so lost

that the eternal love cannot return--

as long as hope shows something green.

♪

Raffa: Manfred was the son of an emperor

who died in a battle in 1266.

And because he'd been excommunicated not once but twice

by different popes, when he was buried,

because he was a heretic, his bones needed to be thrown

into territory that was not sacred.

But yet, he's still saved.

And so, he makes that point to Dante,

that it doesn't matter what other people

think on earth, even the pope.

It matters what was going on in his heart.

♪

Narrator: Continuing their ascent up the rocky slopes of Purgatory,

Dante and Virgil soon encountered

another group of souls:

those who had died violent deaths

and achieved salvation only at the last possible moment...

♪

including, among them, a young woman from Siena,

Pia de' Tolomei, who had been murdered by her husband

in the swamp lands of Maremma

and died without receiving absolution.

♪

Voices: O soul.

♪

O soul.

♪

O soul who make your way to gladness

with the limbs you had at birth,

do stay your steps awhile...

to see if there are any among us whom you knew,

that you might carry word of him--or her--beyond.

♪

Raffa: One of the most beautiful parts of Dante's Purgatory

is the reciprocity between the living and the dead,

the spirits in Purgatory persistently ask Dante

to tell their relatives and other people

that they left behind to pray for them

so that they can speed their journey up the mountain

and get to Heaven more quickly.

[Wind blowing]

Dante even goes against the theology of his day.

He allows the souls in Purgatory

to pray for the people on earth and to help them.

Dante says, "I'm going to create this world in which

"the living and the dead really have a communion,

a conversation between them."

♪

Narrator: At the very end of the scene,

Pia de' Tolomei implored Dante not to forget her

when he returned to the land of the living,

as she had no one else to pray for her deliverance.

♪

Pray, after your returning to the world,

when, after your long journeying, you've rested, ...

♪

May you remember me, who am La Pia;

♪

Siena made me-- Maremma unmade me:

♪

he--who, when we were wed, gave me his pledge...

and then, as nuptial ring, his gem--knows that.

♪

[Wind blowing] [Bird cawing]

♪

Narrator: In 1309, stunning news

rocked the Italian peninsula

when word came that the seat of the papacy

had been moved by Pope Clement from Rome to Avignon in France,

where it would remain for the next 69 years--

abducted, in effect, by the French King Philip,

in a blow that for Dante, and Italians everywhere,

struck at the very heart of their pride and identity.

The Church, as Dante would soon say

of the shocking removal,

had made itself a whore to the French giant.

♪

That same year, however,

equally momentous news arrived

when word came that far to the north,

Henry of Luxembourg had been elected

Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,

and two months later crowned King of Germany,

bringing the promise of a restoration of political order

on the unquiet Italian peninsula--

and accelerating a transformation long in the making

in Dante's political allegiances--

as the prospect that the new emperor

might chasten the corrupt worldly ambitions of the pope

loomed like a utopian dream.

♪

Bruscagli: It's a kind of moment of passage

in Dante's especially political thought,

because this is the moment where Dante

becomes such a fierce supporter of the emperor.

♪

Narrator: In January 1311, when Henry himself

came south to be crowned in Milan,

Dante was there to meet him--

urging him to bring Florence to heel,

and to bring to an end decades of meddling by the pope.

♪

Pertile: Dante was hopeful that Henry would in a sense

open up the doors of the city to Dante.

Then Dante could return to Florence

in a position of strength.

Webb: He wanted to go back and be crowned poet laureate

at his bel San Giovanni,

the baptistry where he was

first baptized into the faith.

And so, there's this kind of immense hope

for a resolution to his exile.

♪

All of the penitents

in each terrace of Purgatorio

are at different stages.

Everyone there is going through their own

personalized experience of penance.

And, therefore, some will be further along than others.

♪

Some will be deeper into the vice,

some will be closer to the opposing virtue.

♪

Dante puts himself forward not as particularly exemplary,

not as a shining paragon of all virtues,

but rather as someone like the rest of us reading the poem,

who ourselves will have some of his faults

and might want to aspire to some of the virtues

that are presented throughout the "Purgatorio."

And so, he tells us, for instance, that

he's going to have to spend significant amounts of time

on the Terrace of Pride,

but envy's not really his thing.

♪

Narrator: Having climbed all the terraces but one,

Virgil and Dante ascended now to the Terrace of Lust,

where purging souls repented the tempests

of erotic feeling that had so overtaken them in life,

and in refining fires,

not of punishment but purification,

sought to accommodate themselves to desires

they do not so much repudiate

as seek to understand and refine.

♪

Quint: Poets before Dante, and the poets after him,

did not particularly see erotic love

leading towards the love of God.

And I think that that's what makes

the "Divine Comedy" powerful and speaks to us,

is that we are sexual beings, that we have these desires,

that they are not simply illicit and lead us into temptations.

And they're not to be simply overcome

but, in some ways, to be transformed.

♪

Narrator: As the two pilgrims neared

the very end of the terrace,

they found themselves face to face

with two of the greatest love poets of all time--

an exquisite lyricist named Guido Guinezzelli--

and the great Provencal troubadour Arnaut Daniel--

who more than anyone else had inspired Dante

to use the vernacular to put into words

feelings of longing and love.

♪

Man as Daniel: Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;

♪

I am Arnaut, who, going, weep and sing;

♪

with grief, I see my former folly;

♪

with joy, I see the hoped-for day draw near.

♪

Now--I pray you--by the Power that conducts you

to the summit of the stairway,

remember, at time opportune, my pain!

♪

sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor!

♪

Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina.

♪

Fazzini as Dante: Then he withdrew once again

into the fire that refines.

♪

Narrator: The purging soul of Arnaut Daniel

had scarcely withdrawn into the flames,

when from beyond the flickering wall of fire

an angelic emissary appeared,

and to Dante's deep dismay made clear

that all who would go beyond must themselves

pass through the same refining wall of fire.

♪

Paralyzed with fear, Dante adamantly refused

to step into the wall of flames

until Virgil, despairing he might never

get his frightened charge across,

reminded him that Beatrice

was awaiting him on the other side.

♪

Adoyo: Remember--when we first got into the "Commedia"--

we learned that Beatrice was the one who was responsible

for this journey happening in the first place.

And we anticipate her arrival

for the entire journey.

It's beautiful how Dante's love and desire to see her

is always the impetus that drives him forward

when his energy flags.

When he's too frightened, when he gets distracted,

Virgil can always invoke Beatrice's name

to get him moving.

Love prompted me.

That love which makes me speak.

♪

Giunta: Dante writes the "Purgatorio"

at the beginning of the second decade of the 14th century.

So, 1310-15.

Beatrice is dead since 1290,

so, it's a 25-years gap.

And the whole structure of the "Comedy"

is like a journey to Beatrice.

So, very touching is this long, long link of devotion

to a woman he never touched, in fact.

♪

Narrator: Having passed through the flames,

Virgil and Dante rested for the night

on the steps above the final terrace.

They had neared the very summit.

And it was now here, when they had reached

the highest step, with the threshold of

the Garden of Earthly Paradise before them,

that Virgil turned his gaze lovingly to his charge

and spoke.

♪

Virgil: My son, you've seen the temporary fire

and the eternal fire;

you have reached the place past which my powers cannot see.

I've brought you here through intellect and art;

♪

from now on, let pleasure be your guide;

♪

you're past the steep and narrow paths.

♪

Look at the sun that shines upon your brow;

♪

look at the grasses, flowers, and the shrubs born here,

spontaneously, out of the earth.

♪

Among them, you can rest or walk

until the coming of the glad and lovely eyes--

♪

those eyes that, weeping, sent me to your side.

♪

Await no further word from me:

your will is free, erect, and whole--

to act against that would be to err:

♪

therefore I crown and miter you over yourself.

♪

Narrator: It was a momentous turning point,

and for Dante, almost overwhelming to conceive

that thanks to Virgil, and the long journey

they had undertaken together,

he who had once been lost

had finally found himself again--

that once so self-enchained, he was now free.

♪

Glancing towards his beloved mentor,

Dante now stepped slowly and tremulously

into the world that lay before him--

an ancient forest

unlike anything he had ever seen before--

dense, alive with green, divine.

♪

He had taken only a few steps into this enchanted world

when a solitary figure--a woman he had never seen before--

appeared through the trees,

singing softly as she gathered flowers,

and when she had come close enough,

confirming for him that he had come to the place

where humankind had once been innocent,

and where Adam and Eve had first sinned and fallen.

♪

Deep in the shimmering forest beyond her,

Dante could just make out 7 slender trees,

which, as he approached, seemed to take the shape

of a sacred candelabra.

♪

Astonished, Dante turned back to Virgil for a moment,

who returned his gaze with eyes no less amazed.

♪

And now, when he turned back,

a shimmering procession of figures

had begun to drift into view--

solemn elders, two by two,

angelic men and women,

singing as they moved,

with wreaths of lilies on their heads,

and behind them 4 great 6-winged creatures

in whose midst a chariot moved, drawn by a gryphon.

♪

It was then--as the procession came to a halt--

that Dante finally made out the figure

of an ineffably beautiful,

infinitely familiar woman in its midst.

♪

It was the moment of epiphany and return

Dante had been dreaming of for years.

♪

Narrator as Dante: I have at times seen all the eastern sky

becoming rose as day began;

and seen adorned in lovely blue the rest of Heaven;

and seen the sun's face rise so veiled

that it was tempered by the mist,

and could permit the eye to look at length upon it;

♪

so within a cloud of flowers

that were cast by the angelic hands...

a woman showed herself to me--

above a white veil, she was crowned with olive boughs--

her cape was green; her dress beneath, flame-red...

♪

Within her presence, I had once been used to feeling--

trembling--wonder, dissolution;

Still, though... now she was veiled-- ...,

by way of hidden force that she could move,

I felt the mighty power of old love.

♪

As soon as that deep force had struck my vision

I turned around and to my left--....

to say to Virgil: "I am left with less than

"one drop of my blood that does not tremble:

I recognize the signs of the old flame."

♪

Narrator: But to Dante's unutterable

grief and sorrow,

Virgil was no longer there.

♪

Narrator as Dante: Virgil had deprived us of himself,

Virgil, the gentlest father,

Virgil, to whom I gave myself for my salvation;

and even all our ancient mother lost

was not enough to keep my cheeks, though washed with dew,

from darkening again with tears.

♪

Barolini: For many readers,

that moment when we lose Virgil

near the end of Purgatory

remains the ultimate moment of the poem.

Because what Dante really gives us

is experiencing loss in real time as readers.

Ledda: Virgil, the guide in Hell and Purgatory, the poet,

the author, the beloved master,

had to go back to Limbo.

He is condemned to Hell.

He is in the eternal exile, he never can see God,

never can have the knowledge he desired.

But we love Virgil. Dante loves Virgil.

Dante cries when Virgil leaves.

♪

Dante, though Virgil is leaving you,

♪

do not yet weep, do not weep yet.

♪

Bruscagli: This is the first time that Dante's name

is uttered in the "Divine Comedy,"

when Beatrice addresses him, calling him by name.

But, of course, when Dante meets her

at the end of Purgatory, when there is this meeting--

the Beatrice that he finds is completely different.

♪

She has grown into something totally unexpected,

when you come to the end of Purgatory.

♪

Dante...Dante...Dante, though Virgil is leaving you,

♪

do not yet weep, do not weep yet,

♪

you'll need your tears for what another sword must yet inflict.

♪

Pertile: She treats him as a traitor,

with severity as a boy, really, as a young man,

who's not grown enough to take care of himself.

♪

Here Beatrice is preparing herself

to become the Beatrice of Paradiso.

Look here!

For I am Beatrice, I am!

♪

How were you able to ascend the mountain?

Did you not know that man is happy here?

Adoyo: When she finally arrives

and her demeanor is severe

and dismissive and challenging--

"how dare you show your face here"--

it is confounding, because this is all he's wanted.

This is what has driven him to this point.

And she will not have it.

♪

Narrator: As Dante averted his gaze,

and looked down with shame and mortification,

a sigh of sympathy on his behalf

went up from the host of angelic figures

in the procession before them...

Angels: Lady, why shame him so?

Narrator: bringing Dante to even greater tears,

and spurring Beatrice to explain to them

why her manner was so severe.

♪

I'm more concerned that my reply be understood

by him who weeps beyond,

so that his sorrow's measure match his sin...

♪

Adoyo: And this is where then she gets to articulate

that that thing that he had intuited

when he was 9 years old--

that she signified, symbolized,

pointed to something beyond the merely material--

♪

that is an intuition

that he ought to have cultivated.

♪

He, when young, was such--potentially--

that any propensity innate in him

would have prodigiously succeeded, had he acted.

But where the soil has finer vigor,

there precisely--when untilled or badly seeded--

♪

will that terrain grow wilder and more noxious.

♪

My countenance sustained him for a while;

showing him my youthful eyes,

I led him with me toward the way of righteousness.

♪

As soon as I, upon the threshold of my second age,

had changed my life,

he took himself away from me and followed after another;

when, from flesh to spirit, I had risen,

and my goodness and my beauty had grown,

I was less dear to him, less welcome:

♪

he turned his footsteps towards an untrue path;

followed counterfeits of goodness,

who will never pay in full

what they have promised.

♪

He fell so far there were no other means

to lead him to salvation, except this:

to let him see the people who were lost.

♪

Adoyo: Here's Beatrice, recalling to him

what he already knew,

and he recognizes it,

and is deeply, deeply contrite.

Not because it's a false accusation,

but because it is too true.

Humblingly so.

♪

Fazzini as Dante: Beneath her veil, beyond the stream,

she seemed so to surpass her former self in beauty...

♪

as, here on earth, she had surpassed all others.

♪

The nettle of remorse so stung me then, ...

that those among all other things

that once allured my love

became most hateful to me.

♪

Such self-indictment seized my heart

that I collapsed, my senses slack;

♪

what I became is known to her who was the cause of it.

♪

Narrator: When Dante's piercing self-indictment

and heartfelt confession

had brought to a climax his own purgatorial journey,

he was solemnly bathed in the two unending streams

that flowed through the enchanted forest--

first, in the waters of Lethe,

that washed away the memories of sin,

then in the waters of Eunoe,

that restored memories of goodness and innocence.

♪

And so, the final canto of Purgatory came to an end--

and with it the second great part

of Dante's vast poem.

And as it did, Beatrice and Dante--

readied themselves to leave Purgatory

once and for all--

"pure at last, and prepared to climb unto the stars."

♪

All through the winter of 1311 and 1312,

Dante was in Genoa as the armies of Henry VII

gathered to the south near Rome,

where that spring, the emperor was crowned yet again.

♪

Declaring papal authority inferior to his own--

and all of Italy subject to imperial rule--

Henry then prepared to lay siege

to the Guelph stronghold of Florence.

Bruscagli: When the emperor Henry VII

came down to Italy to restore

the rights of the empire around the peninsula,

it's a project that, as we know,

Dante totally supported at that point.

But the city of Florence responded

in a very fierce way.

[Horse whinnying, explosions]

Narrator: For 6 weeks, the city put up

staunch resistance, until in the end,

the emperor's forces were forced to withdraw,

to Dante's bitter disappointment.

♪

The following year, Henry regrouped his forces,

and was preparing to lay siege to Siena

when late that summer, he was stricken with malaria,

and died on August 24th, 1313.

He was 40 years old, and with his death

any hopes of imperial rule on the Italian peninsula

quickly withered and faded away.

♪

The following year, in 1314, with Pope Clement

re-asserting papal rights over the Holy Roman Empire,

"Inferno," the first canticle of Dante's great poem,

was published for the first time--

followed, not long after, by "Purgatorio."

♪

Dante had in all probability not yet even begun "Paradiso,"

the third and final canticle of the monumental undertaking.

But as copies of the first two parts of the poem

began to circulate through the courts of northern Italy,

his reputation began to soar upward.

♪

In May 1315, officials in Florence,

after years of refusing to grant him amnesty,

finally offered the increasingly famous poet

a chance to return home--

on condition that he publicly ask for grace,

pay a fee to the commune,

and undergo a humiliating ceremony of confession

in front of civic dignitaries.

♪

Outraged that the terms required

acknowledging himself to be a criminal, Dante refused.

Alan Cox as Boccaccio: And as the poet himself

wrote to the elders, in a fury:

If Florence is to be entered by no other path,

then never will I enter Florence.

♪

Webb: I think that probably was one of the major points

when he sort of realized he probably would never be going back.

And then I think you do see this shift where

he's no longer seeing, perhaps, the most concrete solutions

for how things are going to work out in this world.

There's this sort of sense to where it's the end of the "Paradiso"

where certain earthly chances have been lost.

Dante does not see the same kind of hope

for a resolution in the earthly realm

that he had seen earlier.

So, I think there is kind of a dark turn

that happens at some point...

♪

but that dark turn does not occlude

the immense luminosity, and the joy of the "Paradiso,"

because what he's suggesting is that we need

to look beyond the immediacy of our earthly situations.

[Wind blowing]

Narrator: Dante's whereabouts in the years

following Henry's death

are veiled in uncertainty.

But sometime in 1316-- whether in Pisa or Verona--

he seems to have begun work on the first cantos of "Paradiso."

♪

Narrator as Dante: The glory of the One who moves all things

permeates the universe and glows

in one part more and in another less.

I was within the heaven that receives

more of His light; and I saw things that he

who from that height descends,

forgets or cannot speak;

for nearing its desired end,

our intellect sinks into an abyss

so deep that memory fails to follow it.

Nevertheless, as much as I,

within my mind, could treasure of the holy kingdom

shall now become the matter of my song.

♪

Narrator: In the 33 cantos that ensued--

the most luminous, daring, and in many ways

groundbreaking of the entire poem--

Dante would ascend with Beatrice

up through the 9 heavenly spheres

radiating outward from the Earth

in the third unearthly region of the afterlife, Paradise.

As the canticle began, Dante and Beatrice

were still standing side by side at the very summit

of the Mountain of Purgatory.

In the poem's chronology, it was near noon

on Wednesday, April 13, 1300,

just 6 days after his sojourn had begun in the dark forest.

The precise moment that they left the Earth

would be described in a passage equally beholden

to the drama of the moment it captured,

to the dazzling interplay of light that would dominate

and characterize all of "Paradiso,"

and to the ineffability of the new reality

he was experiencing.

♪

Narrator as Dante: I saw Beatrice turn round

and left, that she might see the sun;

no eagle has ever stared so steadily at it.

And as a second ray will issue from the first

and re-ascend much like a pilgrim who seeks

his home again,

so on the sun I set my sight more than we usually do

I did not bear it long, but not so briefly

as not to see it sparkling round about,

like molten iron emerging from the fire;

and suddenly it seemed that day had been added to day,

as if the One who can

had graced the heavens with a second sun...

from the sun,

I turned aside; I set my eyes on her.

In watching her, within me I was changed.

Passing beyond the human cannot be worded

until grace grant you the experience.

Narrator: Uncertain whether what he was experiencing

was happening only in his mind, he was about to speak

when Beatrice began to speak for him.

You are not on the Earth as you believe;

but lightning, flying from its own abode,

is less swift than you are,

returning home.

Barolini: The first most remarkable thing

about the "Paradiso" is

the most beautiful language in the world

in terms of feeling almost materially and corporeally

what language of such density,

and such metaphoric richness and such eros--

the most erotic language in the poem is

in the "Paradiso."

All things, among themselves, possess an order;

and this order is the form that makes the universe like God...

Within that order, every nature has its bent,

according to a different station,

near or less near to its origin.

Therefore, these natures move to different ports

across the mighty sea of being,

each given the impulse that will bear it on.

Narrator: As we are to discover, the experience

of Paradise would be radically unlike

what had come before.

While Inferno and Purgatory, as Dante had experienced them,

were both real and existed as such,

the Paradise Beatrice leads him through

can only be a simulacrum of Paradise as it actually is

because Paradise in its essence is beyond human apprehension.

Paradise in itself is an experience

beyond time and space.

The only way Dante can receive this experience

and can live this experience

and can narrate this experience must be rendered in time.

So the souls come from the Empyrean

and appear to Dante, heaven after heaven,

and that simulates some sort of Paradise,

but we know that this is just a show,

and this is not the real Paradise.

This is a theater of Paradise, which is performed just for him.

Pertile: Dante on the one hand acknowledges the existence

of this Paradiso beyond space and beyond time.

On the other hand, he creates a kind of

accommodation for us, for the readers,

and for himself as a human being, as a visitor,

whereby Paradiso itself condescends to

and adapts to the conditions created by Dante's poem.

[Choir singing in Latin]

Narrator as Dante: Then it was clear to me

how every place in Heaven is in Paradise,

though grace does not rain equally from the High Good.

♪

Adoyo: In Paradise, you almost never see human figures

or any kind of anthropomorphic representation of a soul

because everything is a flame or a spark,

a scintilla of starlight,

and you can tell who's speaking because that light

emanates more brightly and then recedes.

♪

Bruscagli: The exception is Beatrice.

Beatrice remains visible all throughout Paradise,

and yet at the same time, Beatrice is not

the same in Paradise, heaven after heaven,

because her beauty increases.

Her beauty goes through a continuous

augmentation of luminosity.

If in the fire of love, I seem to flame

beyond the measure visible on Earth,

so that I overcome your vision's force,

you need not wonder;

I am so because of my perfected vision--

as I grasp the good,

so I approach the good in act.

Indeed I see that in your intellect

now shines the never-ending light;

once seen, that light,

alone and always, kindles love.

Webb: What's so striking is how much Dante leans

on Beatrice to provide

so many of the central discourses of the "Paradiso."

Every so often, there are other characters

who will come in and say things, but really it's Beatrice

who takes the lead, and she takes Dante

through the full range of all that is in Paradiso

from the excitement and the joy to the righteous anger

and all the rest of it.

Bruscagli: And so Dante goes from one sky to the other,

dragged, almost propelled up

by the beautiful gaze, luminous gaze of Beatrice.

Narrator: And so one by one they ascended

through the heavenly spheres

up through the sphere of Mercury

and on still further through the heaven of Venus,

where the many kinds of human love

were unfolded and extolled--

erotic love, marital love,

the love of friends, and love of the divine...

and on to the heaven of the sun,

where wisdom and truth were celebrated.

Webb: In Paradiso, most of the souls are not

very visible because they're so luminous,

but they still act as bodies in that they gesture.

They move toward Dante.

They smile and grow brighter when they smile.

There's that wonderful poignant moment

when the souls all respond, "Amme!"

a kind of "Amen" to the declaration

of the fact that they will get their bodies back,

maybe not for themselves, but for their mothers

and fathers and others who were dear to them.

So the notion is you want to have a body

not for yourself but in order to interact

with those who are beloved to you,

and Dante makes that space not just for family members

but for all those who are dear to you.

Narrator: It was in the next sphere,

in the heaven of Mars,

that Dante would have one of the most moving, personal,

and fateful encounters of the entire poem,

when he was brought face to face

with his own long dead ancestor Cacciaguida...

a knight who had fought in the Second Crusade

and died in the Holy Lands in 1149.

♪

O you, my branch in whom I took delight

even awaiting you, I am your root.

The man who gave your family its name,

who for a century and more has

circled the first ledge of Purgatory,

was son to me and was your great-grandfather;

Florence, within her ancient ring of walls,

that ring from which she still draws tierce and nones--

sober and chaste, lived in tranquility...

To such a life-- so tranquil and so lovely--

of citizens in true community,

into so sweet a dwelling place did Mary,

invoked in pains of birth, deliver me;

and I, within your ancient Baptistery,

at once became Christian and Cacciaguida.

♪

Narrator: The poignant meeting occurs

halfway through Dante's ascent with Beatrice up

through the 9 spheres of Paradise

not long before the entire life-changing sojourn

through the 3 realms of the afterlife

was destined to come to an end.

♪

Beginning now to anticipate his return

to what he would soon call

"the world of endless bitterness below,"

Dante asked Cacciaguida to tell him

what fate held in store for him.

♪

Hippolytus was forced to leave his Athens

because of his stepmother, faithless, fierce;

and so must you depart from Florence: this

is willed already, sought for, soon to be

accomplished by the one who plans and plots

where--every day--Christ is both sold and bought...

♪

You shall leave everything you love most dearly:

this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first.

♪

You are to know the bitter taste

of others' bread,

how salt it is,

and know how hard a path it is

for one who goes

descending and ascending others' stairs.

And what will be most hard for you to bear...

will be the scheming, senseless company

that is to share your fall into this valley;

and thus, your honor will be best kept

if your party is your self.

Bruscagli: His ancestor Cacciaguida finally lifts

the veil and really reveals what awaits Dante.

No more illusions.

Now the future is in front of him,

and it is a brutal future.

it's a future of rejection,

it's a future of political disillusionment.

You leave everything that you love.

Adoyo: Dante says to Cacciaguida,

"I have been told that there are dire times

"that await me and Florence and my people,

"and throughout this journey, I have also seen things

"that reveal to me what the seeds

"of those dire times are,

"like how it is that we get to these places

"that are so terrible.

"I want to tell people what I've seen.

"I want them to see what I have been able to discern,

"to understand that we have a choice,

"but I'm afraid to lose what I have,

"I'm afraid to be ostracized,

"and yet, if I am an enemy to the truth that I know,

"then I am afraid that I'll be doing a disservice

"to those who will call our times ancient.

"I will be doing a disservice to posterity

"if I don't dare speak out against the corruption

"and the greed and the malice that I've witnessed

"and what it looks like,

how it manifests in our society."

And Cacciaguida tells Dante, "Don't be afraid.

Speak the truth, no matter what it costs you."

♪

Cacciaguida: A conscience that is dark--

either through its or through another's shame--

indeed will find that what you speak is harsh.

Nevertheless, all falsehood set aside,

let all that you have seen be manifest,

and let them scratch wherever it may itch.

For if, at the first taste, your words molest,

they will, when they have been digested, end

as living nourishment.

As does the wind,

so let your outcry do-- the wind that sends

its roughest blows against the highest peaks.

Bruscagli: And Cacciaguida said, "You go and tell the truth."

So Dante is stripped of any illusion about his future,

but what remains is the mission of his poem.

His life has become his poem.

All the broken, fragmentary prophecies that he has

been collecting during his journey come together,

and all of a sudden, the poem is his destiny.

Forget about the exile, forget about Florence,

forget about what happened to you as a politician,

as a public figure.

What remains of your life is this poem.

This is your future.

Cachey: It's a self-authorization,

a self-certification

that is built completely around the fact of his exile.

It is revealed that his providential mission

is to be exiled and to write the poem

from the position of exile

that will save the world fundamentally.

♪

Narrator: Following Dante's refusal of the offer

of amnesty in 1315, the city fathers of Florence

had lashed out again,

condemning the 50-year old poet

one last time together with his sons

to yet another sentence of death,

this time by decapitation,

with an additional provision that anyone

who wished had permission "to harm them,

in property and person, freely and with impunity."

The doors of his native city had closed one final time,

never again to be reopened during his lifetime.

Cachey: Between 1319 and 1321, he's between Verona and Ravenna,

and there's more questions really than answers,

about what Dante's motivation was for moving to Ravenna.

Bruscagli: He was already a well-recognized poet

at that point.

"Paradise" had not yet been completed or published,

but "Inferno" and "Purgatorio" had been circulating already.

♪

Narrator: In 1318, he moved one last time

from Verona to Ravenna

on the far eastern coast of the peninsula,

where he came under the protection

of the lord of the city Guido Novello da Polenta,

a nephew of Francesca da Rimini.

Bruscagli: The court of Guido Novello

might have been a harbor for Dante.

Guido Novello was a very kind and generous host

for Dante in Ravenna.

Certainly the atmosphere in Ravenna was quieter.

Narrator: With its mysterious air of history and time

and so much long gone Ravenna seemed to take

powerful hold of his imagination.

Bruscagli: The last cantos of "Paradise"

might have been inspired by the mosaics

of the great churches in Ravenna.

Narrator: By 1321, the impact of more than two decades of exile

and of the unimaginably exhausting demands

of the poem itself had taken an enormous toll

on the gaunt and beleaguered writer.

Fulvido di fulgore.

Narrator: In many ways, the experience

of writing the poem and the narrative unfolding

within it had converged almost completely.

Dipinte di mirabil primavera.

Cachey: And in 1320, he's writing the last canti

of the "Paradiso," the greatest poetry

that he ever wrote and that has ever been written

from some perspectives.

E d'ogne parte si mettien ne' fiori...

quasi rubin

che oro circunscrive;

poi, come inebriate da li odori...

Cachey: To me, that suggests

that underneath there's a really deep vulnerability.

Narrator: By the spring of 1321,

Dante had completed 20 of the 33 cantos of "Paradise"

and sent all but the final 13 to his former patron in Verona.

Not long after in late July,

Guido da Polenta asked him to undertake

an urgent ambassadorial mission

to the Republic of Venice,

a 3 days' ride up the marshy Adriatic coast,

hoping that with war now looming

between Ravenna and the Serenissima

"his eloquence and reputation as poet," he said,

"might avert impending ruin."

The mission, though not immediately successful,

probably laid the groundwork

for an eventually peaceful resolution of the crisis,

though Dante himself would not be around to see it.

Returning from Venice through the pine woods of Classe

on which he had modeled the heavenly forest

where he and Beatrice had been reunited

at the end of "Purgatorio," he contracted malaria

coming through the swamplands north of Ravenna

and died two weeks later over the night

of September 13 and 14, 1321...

surrounded by close friends, and his children.

♪

He was 56 years old.

Writing of his death, Giovanni Boccaccio

would write that he had left "the miseries

"of this present life behind

and rendered to his Creator his toil-worn spirit."

♪

All Ravenna mourned Dante's passing.

Guido Novello, stricken it was said

with "the greatest grief,"

ordered he be honored with rites reserved

only for the greatest of poets,

his body borne on the shoulders of the city's

most distinguished citizens,

carried through the streets accompanied

by public lamentations

to the Church of San Pier Maggiore,

where it was placed in a plain stone sarcophagus

and buried a few steps from the church

in a simple tomb...

the first of many that would eventually be erected there.

♪

To this day, Italy's greatest poet lies

at the end of a narrow lane within the modest

if dignified sepulcher

originally inscribed, with an epitaph that itself

has long since vanished:

"Here I, Dante, am confined,

"an exile from my native shores,

Born of Florence, a mother of little love."

It was widely presumed that before setting off

on his final ill-fated mission to Venice Dante

had finished his great masterpiece,

but after the funeral, it was soon revealed

to the enormous chagrin of his family and friends

that the last 13 cantos of "Paradise"

were nowhere to be found.

For months, his sons Jacopo and Pietro searched

through their father's manuscripts for any sign

of the missing cantos to no avail.

The catastrophe could not be overstated.

Dante Alighieri's gift to the world,

the greatest poem, as he himself fervently believed,

ever written in the history of Western literature,

had been left tragically unfinished.

♪

The survival and transmission of literary texts

has always been subject to accidents of fate

and the vagaries of time.

No manuscript of the "Divine Comedy"

in Dante's own hand survives,

and from the moment of his death,

the question of whether his masterpiece would come down

to posterity intact was fraught with uncertainty.

In this respect, as in so many others,

posterity has Dante's first biographer,

the writer Giovanni Boccaccio, to thank for what is known

about the missing cantos of "Paradise."

Visiting Ravenna in 1346, 25 years after Dante's death,

Boccaccio had met with a close friend

and disciple of Dante's Piero Giardino,

who had known the poet in his final years,

who had provided Dante with the home he had stayed in,

and who now shared with Boccaccio

an extraordinary story.

In May 1322, 8 months after Dante died,

the poet's younger son Jacopo, had come to Piero Giardino

in the middle of the night in a state of agitation

and told him of an uncanny dream he had had,

"a marvelous vision" in which his father

had come to him in his sleep.

♪

That night, his father had come to him clothed

in shining raiment

and with an unusual light shining in his face.

Asking his father if he were alive,

his father had said, "Yes, but in the true life,

not in yours."

He then asked his father if he had completed

his great work before passing to the true life

and, if he had, where they might find the missing pages,

whereupon his father took him by the hand

and led him to the room where in life he had slept,

and touching the wall at a certain place said,

"Here is what you are seeking for,"

and then departed.

And so the son and the disciple started together

and went to the place his father had touched

and there beneath a mat on the wall

found a little cavity neither had seen before,

reaching into which they found papers mildewed

by the damp and nearly rotting

if they had stayed a little longer.

Carefully cleaning them, they saw they were

the 13 cantos so much sought,

and in great joy copied them

and sent them first, as was the custom of the author,

to the Lord Cangrande and then joined them

to the imperfect work.

♪

Narrator: One way or another,

by a quirk of fate or a dream in the night,

the final 13 cantos of "Paradise"

had finally been accounted for,

and with a full manuscript in hand,

Jacopo and Pietro quickly copied out all 100 cantos of the poem,

and "the work of so many years" was now complete.

[Bell tolling]

Cox as Boccaccio: Citizens of Florence,

welcome to this sacred place.

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita."

"Midway upon the journey of our life," et cetera.

I have been tasked, good people of Florence,

with giving an exposition on what lies

beneath the poetic veil of our Dante's "Divine Comedy."

A divine comedy.

It is fitting for a man to invoke

the divinity at the beginning of a great enterprise,

and as is clear from the works of Plautus and Terence,

a comedy is that which has a tumultuous beginning

and ends in peace and tranquility.

♪

So it is with our Dante.

Let us proceed.

♪

Narrator: Florentines began to regret having banished Dante

almost immediately, even before he died,

as word of the soaring masterpiece spread

across the Italian peninsula.

In the decades following his death in exile in 1321,

a younger generation of Florentine writers,

outraged over the poet's fate, rallied to his cause

and none more so than Giovanni Boccaccio,

who, following in Dante's footsteps, would go on

to write the next great masterpiece

in the Florentine vernacular, "The Decameron,"

and spend a lifetime championing his work and reputation.

[Whispering]

Determined to keep the flame of Dante's great work alive,

Boccaccio would compose the first biography of Dante,

one of the first biographies ever written,

inspired in part by the deeply autobiographical character

of the poem.

Boccaccio even copied out the entire text

of the "Comedy" no fewer than 3 times

and recited it for rapt public gatherings

in the sanctuary of the Badia,

not far from Dante's long-since dispossessed home,

where he also gave lectures about the poem's deeper meanings

and even conferred upon it the name by which

it has ever after been known.

Bruscagli: Boccaccio read Dante in the very Chiesa della Badia

just here in this chapel,

and that was the first time that Dante was read publicly,

and it was the first time that a secular text

was explained and almost preached over

in a religious space.

So Dante, the "Divine Comedy,"

was treated in a way like the holy scriptures

and already like a national glory of Florence.

Boccaccio would read and explain the "Divine Comedy"

in vernacular and would read for everybody.

All the citizens of Florence were invited to get familiar

with or even memorize a text which was already

a legendary text of our civilization.

Florence was trying to regain spiritually

the son that it had exiled.

A little too late but better late than never.

Cox as Boccaccio: A divine comedy.

♪

Narrator: As for Dante himself,

who had spent a lifetime dreaming of Beatrice Portinari,

who had journeyed to the afterlife and up

through the heavenly spheres

under her guidance and protection,

and who had died still longing to be reunited with her,

the final cantos of "Paradise" would prove to be

at once an ecstatic vision and a glorious fulfillment.

♪

Turn thee about and listen;

Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.

Narrator: They had arrived now in the seventh heaven,

the sphere of Saturn,

on the verge of the heaven of the zodiac and fixed stars

at the outermost edge of the Ptolemaic universe

at the very limits of space and time

beyond which lay the Empyrean,

the realm of God, the true Paradise,

beyond the simulacrum they had just finished traveling through.

You are so near the final blessedness

That you have need of vision clear and keen

And thus, before you enter further,

do look downward,

See what I have set beneath your feet already.

Much of the world is there;

if you see that

Your heart may then present itself

with all the joy it can

to the triumphant throng

That goes in gladness

through this rounded ether.

♪

Bruscagli: When Beatrice invites him to look down

and under his feet he sees all the planets

and at the center of the universe he sees the Earth,

this little globe that makes us so ferocious to each other.

So the only solution is to look down

and then look up into the eyes of Beatrice.

Narrator as Dante: My eyes returned through all

the 7 spheres

And all the 7 heavens showed to me

their magnitudes, their speeds, the distances

of each from each.

The little threshing floor

that so incites our savagery was all--

from hills to river mouths-- revealed to me

while I wheeled with eternal Gemini.

My eyes then turned again to the fair eyes.

♪

Narrator: Leaving the sphere of the fixed stars,

they ascended now into the final heavenly sphere.

Pertile: There is a moment in "Paradiso"

when Dante moves into the Empyrean,

and the Empyrean is not a place.

It's not a time.

It's a concept. It's an idea.

It is pure existence, it's pure being.

Empyrean ultimately is the mind of God,

and it is in that mind

that all that Dante has been through

is somehow contained.

It is a thought of that mind,

and if that mind stopped thinking about it,

our universe would vanish.

♪

Narrator: And now here, in heaven's light,

on the very brink of time and eternity,

Beatrice spoke to Dante one last time.

♪

From matter's largest sphere,

we now have reached the heaven of pure light...

light of the intellect,

light filled with love,

love of true good,

love filled with happiness,

a happiness surpassing every sweetness.

Here you will see both ranks of Paradise

and see one of them wearing that same aspect

which you will see again at Judgment Day.

♪

Narrator: As Dante looked on, a great river of light

seemed to take shape before him in the sky,

curving slowly into an ever-widening circle,

until at length a flower-like court of light

loomed above him in the sky,

revealing the circumference of a vast shimmering rose--

its circling rows of petals

forming 1,000 tiers for all the souls of heaven,

each petal the seat of one celestial soul.

Turning in awe and wonder to Beatrice,

he saw now that she was no longer at his side,

and in her place a saint-like elder

had appeared, who to his urgent cry "Where is she?"

pointed to a circle

near the highest rank of petals in the rose,

where he now saw Beatrice seated

at once far away and yet to his now undimmed vision

so close he almost seemed to touch her.

Bruscagli: When at the end

with the really moving farewell to Beatrice,

the last time that he sees Beatrice,

up in the Empyrean, she's far away,

but in the Empyrean, the space doesn't count

and the distance doesn't count.

She, for the last time, looks at him,

but one last moment of silent intimacy,

and then she looks up towards God,

and Dante says farewell.

"O lady,

"You drew me out from slavery to freedom

"by all those paths,

"by all those means that were

"within your power.

"Do, in me, preserve your generosity,

"so that my soul, which you have healed,

"when it is set loose from my body,

be a soul that you will welcome."

So did I pray.

And she, however far away she seemed,

smiled, and she looked at me.

Then she turned back to the eternal fountain.

♪

Narrator: And so Beatrice Portinari left

Dante Alighieri one last time,

taken into the very heart

of the great heavenly rose above him...

and in the pulsing lines and passages that remained

of the great poem, Dante felt his own desire

and volition come at last into ultimate alignment

with the sublime harmony of God's will.

Bruscagli: Once again, Dante is not able to communicate

and to share the real final experience of Paradise

because to describe Paradise,

the experience of seeing God face to face,

according to the words of Saint Paul,

that is--that is simply impossible

for a human language, for a human tongue,

so the real experience of Paradise is

in the white space under the last verse of the poem.

Narrator as Dante: Here force failed my high fantasy;

but my desire and will were moved already--

like a wheel revolving uniformly

by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

♪

Fazzini as Dante: A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa;

ma già volgeva il mio disio e 'l velle,

sì come rota ch'igualmente è mossa,

l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

♪

Narrator: Looking back, it would be almost impossible

to overstate the magnitude of Dante's achievement

in the 14,233 lines of hypnotically compelling verse

that constitute the "Divine Comedy,"

a triumph of the human imagination

and an incomparable outpouring of literary and poetic genius

that would elevate and permanently transform

the language, culture, and self-understanding

not only of the Italian peninsula

but of the European continent at large

and eventually the world.

Bruscagli: So what happened in Italy?

What happened is that the language that Dante chose,

the Florentine on the street,

became the language of my country.

Why? Because of the immense prestige of Dante's work

and of the "Divine Comedy,"

which was followed by two other masterpieces

written in the Florentine, the "Rhymes" by Petrarch

and "The Decameron" by Boccaccio.

The Italian language and literature starts

with this kind of big bang.

In 50 years, those 3 masterpieces,

but the one who really indicated the path

and gave the courage to the others to go

through that path was Dante.

♪

Raffa: After Dante dies in 1321, the "Divine Comedy"

was widely disseminated.

It becomes essentially a bestseller, you know,

if we can use that term for medieval literature,

but not everybody is going to like what Dante says,

because, in fact, he is being harsh against people in power.

Narrator: Following the enormous surge

of enthusiasm and praise that greeted Dante's poem

after his death in 1321, in the centuries to come,

the vernacular tradition Dante had pioneered

was overshadowed for a time.

Man: Dante became thought of perhaps even within Italy

as being rough and old-fashioned,

as a noble example but something that

they'd superseded with a more sophisticated style,

and so Dante sort of went out of fashion

certainly in Northern Europe for a couple of hundred years.

Quint: In the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries,

the "Divine Comedy" continued to be read,

it continued to be imitated,

it continued to be thought about,

but it didn't achieve the kind of status that it has achieved

until the last two centuries, till the 19th century

and the 20th century.

[Explosion]

Narrator: And then for Dante, as for Shakespeare, too,

at essentially the same time,

something extraordinary began to occur.

The change would coincide with the dawning

of the Age of Revolution, first the American

and then the French,

and with the coming of an age of egalitarian hope and change,

a world Dante had in so many ways anticipated.

Quint: For the 19th century,

the Romantics found both in Dante and in Shakespeare

these sort of titanic imaginations

that really couldn't be held within the rules

of neoclassical taste and of decorum

and who exploded what were the classical genres,

what were accepted as the forms in which poetry should work.

Narrator: In the English-speaking world,

where Dante had gone untranslated

for half a thousand years,

the first complete translation would appear in 1802,

inaugurating what would become an almost ceaseless tide

of English translations over the next 220 years,

109 to date, and counting,

and from very start of the American experiment,

Dante spoke to something very deep

in the emerging American psyche and soul,

the Dante of exile, of freedom, and free will.

Cachey: Dante's an American poet

in a way that people don't really appreciate.

Dante is extremely important at the foundations

of American literary history.

The oldest academic society in the United States

is the Dante Society of America,

and Longfellow and Emerson did a translation

of the "Vita Nuova."

Narrator: Praising Dante for blazing a new path

for language and literature,

Ralph Waldo Emerson boldly declared,

"Dante is Italian because at that moment

"he could most live as an Italian.

At this moment, he would be born American."

Raffa: Dante writes very explicitly

about spiritual liberation,

but people easily understood that also

as a message about political freedom,

about political liberation and individual liberation,

and so it was easy to translate Dante

from his Italian context to the American context.

Narrator: In Italy itself, for so long faction-torn

and fragmented and long regarded by skeptics

as a mere region on the map incapable of political unity,

Dante's epic work would undergo

a rapturous cultural rehabilitation

in the middle of the 19th century

as the struggle for Italian nationhood gathered momentum.

In 1860, the great Italian patriot and general

Giuseppi Garibaldi, who had been campaigning for years

from one end of the peninsula to the other,

led a series of brilliant military expeditions

from Sicily to Calabria to Naples,

at last making possible the unification

of southern Italy with the north.

[Chorus singing in Italian]

One year later, the age-old dream of Italian unity

and independence came to a sudden glorious culmination

when in March 1861 the new Senate at Turin

proclaimed Victor Emmanuelle II

the constitutional monarch

of the brand-new Kingdom of Italy.

[Cheering and applause]

Almost overnight, Italy had become a country

and Dante himself its patron saint

as the icon and rallying point

of a common Italian culture and identity.

Webb: The Italian language is, in fact, built

on Dante's language, which was so radical at the time

in the "Comedia" because it's such a mixture of things.

You can see him kind of inventing the fullest range

of the Italian language in his poem.

Narrator: Not for nothing, it turned out,

had Dante found Beatrice at the top of Mount Purgatory

in the Garden of Earthly Paradise,

wrapped ravishingly in red, white, and green,

the very colors now of the new Italian flag.

Quint: When a democratic unified Italy came about,

Dante provided a kind of model for using the words

that come from the street

and for a much more colloquial Italian.

One of the things that was found in the "Comedy" was

that it was a good blueprint

for the making of a national language,

a language for the peninsula.

Narrator: in 1865 on the 600th hundredth anniversary

of Dante's birth, the capital of the newly united country

was officially moved from Turin to Florence,

where that spring, to mark the occasion,

a glorious 3-day celebration was held in honor of the new nation

and the poet now universally recognized

as its spiritual father.

Bruscagli: '65 was this apotheosis of patriotism

and the new nation founded in a new capital

and Dante being promoted at that point

truly like the father of the language,

the father of literature, the father of Italy,

the father of everything Italian.

Narrator: On May 14, a crowd of nearly 20,000

gathered in the Piazza Santa Croce,

where at noon, following a series of soaring speeches

paying homage to "the Supreme Poet,

"illustrious Philosopher, and great Citizen

who had long sought a free and united Italy,"

a towering 19-foot tall marble monument was unveiled,

at long last acknowledging Dante in the city of his birth.

♪

Bruscagli: Why should we care about Dante, Dante Alighieri?

After all, he is so far away, so remote from us.

7 centuries separate us from him.

Our world is different, our cosmology is different,

our science is different, our religion is different,

so why should we care about Dante?

Because Dante addresses the core of our humanity.

Dante had the ambition of embracing everything,

of embracing the sense

of us being humans on this planet.

Cachey: Coming from whatever social, political,

educational background,

what the reader discovers is this question

of their own ethical interiority.

You discover the problem of the pilgrim

is your own problem, this problem of identity,

this problem of ethics,

this problem of the vices and the virtues,

of the intellect.

Webb: Dante manages to convey so deftly

all of the range of human experience

from deepest despair to greatest moments

of hope and joy and love.

[Reading in Italian]

Lombardi: He had the sense that he was writing for us.

Every time this text is read by someone in a class,

by students of different ages and different cultures,

we are these people.

Webb: There's no question that Dante intends

this poem to change your life,

and I think that if you engage with it truly,

really trouble all its difficulties,

work through its ambiguities and sit with them,

it will change you.

Bruscagli: What you immediately understand reading

the "Divine Comedy" is that, OK, that was the life

of Dante Alighieri 700 years ago,

but the message is your life matters.

Take care of it. Take care of it.

Your life matters.

♪

♪

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♪