Rescuing Virgil: Memory, Love, and Eternity in the “Divine Comedy”

A petrified Dante, pale cheeks shining with copious tears, ducks away from the frozen terrors of Hell into the warm shoulder of loving Virgil, who sets a paternal kiss upon the rumpled hair and holds the trembling poet’s hands. Slowly and carefully, the overwhelmed poet raises his brow to meet the loving eyes looking down upon him, and his aghast face gently glows with a smile of filial love. It’s a beautiful image, is it not? The richness of Dante and Virgil’s relationship throughout the Divine Comedy colors it with such an emotional appeal that one cannot help but to be included in that loving embrace. And, in my mind, this was Dante’s goal in writing the Divine Comedy: he poured his heart and soul into his epic not only to produce an eschatological commentary, but a work bringing to life the adventures of love.

To study the relationship of Virgil and Dante assists us in seeing this journey of love in a profound way because it is the relationship given the most attention throughout the entirety of the Divine Comedy. Virgil is the first to appear in the Inferno as Dante’s guide and mentor, and accompanies him through Hell and to the peak of Mount Purgatory. Then, in a tragically bittersweet moment, Virgil silently disappears from Dante’s anxious sight as he beholds Beatrice, his lifelong love. However, if we examine Dante’s heart and mind, we still find Virgil in Paradise. Dante’s commentary on the virtue and transcendence of love and poetry is presented through the building of his salvific father-son relationship with Virgil, as well as his immortalization and rescue of Virgil and his poetry from the shortcomings of paganism.

“Honor and light of every poet, may / my long study avail me, and the love / that made me search the volume of your work. / You are my teacher, my authority.” Here, in these words of Dante from the first canto of the Inferno, the beginning of his journey, we immediately can identify Dante’s love and admiration for Virgil: “the love that made me search the volume of your work.” However, while full of admiration and wonder, the love is not necessarily personal but linguistic. In other words, Dante’s love is for Virgil the poet, not Virgil the person. Therefore, Virgil is named “my teacher, my authority,” showing the respect due as if he is a ruler, but we cannot yet find the intimate, personal relationship of love and trust. Dante is the apprentice and Virgil is the master; thus they begin their journey together: “He set on, and I held my pace behind.” Dante’s respect for Virgil leads him to follow, but there is no mutual trust or love, for they are separated by literal distance as well as an emotional distance expected from the interactions of people who have just met and are wary of one another. Although this is the case at the start of the journey, we will see that the isolation, torment, and lovelessness of Hell will quickly bring the two poets together in love, for if they fall into the same traps as those in Hell, they must remain amongst the damned.

The growth of love would be necessary to withstand the horrors of Hell, and, as in any relationship, the development of love between Dante and Virgil demands trust, which takes time. In addition to the sign of wariness that the staggered walking implies, there is an explicit example of initial mistrust, especially on Virgil’s part, towards the beginning of their walk through Hell:

“Quick, turn your back and cover up your face,
For should you see the Gorgon if she shows,
There would be no returning up above!”
So did my Teacher say, and he himself
Turned me around, and since he didn’t trust
My own, he shut my eyes with his hands, too.

Virgil’s care for Dante is obvious in this instance: if nothing else, he cannot let down the heavenly messengers (especially Beatrice) who called him to be Dante’s guide and protector by allowing him to turn to stone under Medusa’s glare in the bowels of Hell. While this may be true, he still doesn’t trust Dante, for “since he didn’t trust / my own, he shut my eyes with his hands, too.” But there is a hint, though subtle, that Virgil is starting to love Dante, in his paternal action of covering Dante’s eyes with his own hands. His care seems, by this example, to be unmistakably affectionate. And as the pair of poets continue through the perilous journey, their love grows along with the necessary trust gained, giving rise to two primary expressions of such love.

The first way in which Dante expresses his love for Virgil throughout the Divine Comedy is by quoting and alluding to Virgil’s poetry. In doing this, Dante serves a triple purpose: firstly, to emphasize his love and knowledge of Virgil’s works: “[M]ay / my long study avail me, and the love / that made me search the volume of your work”; secondly, to demonstrate the necessary role of poetry in his theology, and thirdly, to sanctify Virgil’s poetry, yet imperfect, for it failed to recognize the true God. It has been said that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but for Dante, it is not flattery, it is the greatest honor and love which he can muster to further the immortality of Virgil’s words through his own. Next, poetry, the musical expression of the heart’s movements, is important especially throughout the Inferno as it is the lantern which Dante lights with his own love, rekindled by Virgil, to travel through Hell to Heaven—a sign for the reawakening, orienting, and completing of the human heart and its desires. The orienting factor of love poetry then flows into the final purpose of Dante’s abundant quotations: the orientation of Virgil’s eyes through his poetry to “that same God you never knew,” which becomes important towards the end of the Purgatorio and throughout the Paradiso. Additionally, it is worthwhile to note that while Dante exclaims “I’m not Aeneas” he includes allusions to Aeneas in the underworld in book VI of the Aeneid to parallel his own journey. Moving beyond this statement of false humility, Dante really is another Aeneas. The Aeneas of the Aeneid is Virgil’s son by creation; the Aeneas of Dante is Virgil’s son by the bond of poetic love. This bridges Dante’s two major themes: the quoting of Virgil’s poetry becomes an integral part of the father-son relationship between Virgil and Dante.

The father-son relationship that Dante and Virgil share becomes abundantly clear as they progress through Hell. One instance of this occurs in Canto 17 of the Inferno, where Dante climbs with trepidation upon the dragon-like monster Geryon, finding solace only in Virgil’s strong arms securing him.

I took my seat upon its cursed back,
Trying, trying to say, but my voice couldn’t
Come as I thought, “Please, hold on to me tight.”
But he who’d come so often to my aid
In times of doubt and peril, when I mounted,
Secured me with his arms and bore me up.

The fear of Dante highlights his childlike role, and the saving arm of Virgil likewise emphasizes his paternal presence. Dante calls out in desperation, as we could imagine him squeezing his eyes shut with blind trust in fatherly Virgil, ‘Please, hold on to me tight.’” And Virgil heeds his fearful son’s cry: “he who’d come so often to my aid…secured me with his arms.” This fills the initial void of trust and becomes a pronounced motif of Virgil carrying Dante throughout the Inferno, as well as the Purgatorio. It appears explicitly again when Dante writes, “As fell my master down that bordering stone, / bearing me on his chest as he slid down- / not as his fellow or friend, but as his son.” We notice that Dante still refers to Virgil as “my master,” but it is with filial respect and love as he is held upon Virgil’s paternal breast as a young son finding comfort and protection from grave danger in the embrace of his father.

As the two poets progress further into Hell, where family relations are destroyed, they develop a complete familial relationship to stand in contrast to the destruction of filial relations in the final rung of hell. It culminates in the Inferno, Canto 30:

I was entirely fixed upon those two
When said my Teacher, “You keep looking there
And in a while I’ll pick a fight with you.”
And when I heard the anger in his voice
I turned with such embarrassment and shame
It haunts my memory still.
…
So was I then, when I could not reply,
Wanting to make apology, and I
Apologized indeed-unwittingly.
“Less shame would wash away a greater fault,”
My Teacher said, “than yours has been, and so
Unburden all the sadness from your mind.
Be sure that I am ever at your side.”

In the depths of Hell, the violence which Dante watches, transfixed like a young child, rubs off on Virgil as he snaps impatiently at his distracted son, ‘I’ll pick a fight with you.’” Immediately suffering the shame of a son admonished by his father, “when I heard the anger in his voice / I turned with such embarrassment and shame,” Dante apologizes from under his bowed brow and blushing cheeks, “and I apologized indeed.” We can imagine then the softening of Virgil’s harsh glare into a loving gaze as he repents his rough words, “Unburden all the sadness from your mind. / Be sure that I am ever at your side.” This moment of forgiveness frees Dante and Virgil from the violence and hatred which imprisons the souls they walk amongst. Here, their growing relationship reaches maturity and becomes their way out of Hell for the poets to continue on their journey to reach the base of Mount Purgatory.

Weary and exhausted from the perilous journey through Hell, Dante finds a moment of rest with Virgil at the foot of Mount Purgatory. We could imagine the scene: Dante, perhaps resting his head on Virgil’s chest, lifts his head to offer his cheeks to fatherly Virgil, who clears the tears and smoky grime from his face while smiling upon his beloved son, happy to have led him safely through the dark night of Hell.

My master gently ran his open hands
Over the little tufts of grass, and I,
Who understood the reason for his art,
Presented him my cheeks, still stained and teared.
He wiped them, and at last discovered all
The color that the smoke of Hell had bleared.

Additionally, Virgil is also found as a sturdy guide to Dante when he is blinded: “Never spread for my eyes so thick a veil… / So thick no eye could last it out- / and so the wise, true escort at my side / offered his shoulder, drawing close to me.” These scenes are sweet and endearing in the context of the Purgatorio, adding to the father-son relationship, but they hold further significance with later context, for Virgil’s actions in clearing Dante’s eyes of tears and assisting him when he cannot see becomes a saving grace to Virgil himself who later will see with Dante’s eyes. Virgil, the father who has carried his son through the horrors of Hell and led him when blinded will eventually be carried and given sight by his son in Paradise, coming to know the God he previously did not know.

Before Virgil can come to see Paradise with Dante, however, he must successfully lead him to Beatrice, who waits at the summit of Mount Purgatory. In the course of their journey, the love and trust gained in Hell flowers in the beaming light of Purgatory, the sign of God’s grace. Both poets are drawn into this light. Dante’s love, resurrected, begins moving towards Beatrice, and in Beatrice, God. Virgil, who upon earth did not know God, seems to have received the grace to know Him through Dante, and even calls upon Him, hidden within the symbol of the sun: “At that he fixed his eyes upon the sun… / “Sweet light in whom I place my faith,” he said, / “entering on this journey new to me, / lead us within here as we should be led.” Here, Virgil acknowledges his knowledge of God and His guidance, “Sweet light in whom I place my faith” and also his shortcoming in not having known Him on earth, thus “entering on this journey new to me.” In this moment, the ability of Virgil to see the God he never knew through Dante becomes manifest, and it is added to by the sanctification of Virgil’s poetry, which lacked God, through Dante’s poetry, which uses Virgil’s poetry in reference to God.

I had mentioned previously that Dante often quotes Virgil’s poetry for a variety of reasons. Here, in Purgatorio, his quotation becomes more frequent and direct as he takes on the role of Virgil. As their journey through Purgatory nears its completion, Dante is still carried by Virgil, no longer physically, but through his poetry. However, Dante also begins caring for Virgil like a son caring for his father where his strength fails, carrying Virgil and his poetry to the God they could not attain on their own. This first time this theme is explicitly manifested is in Canto 30 of the Purgatorio when Virgil leaves Dante in the care of Beatrice. It is an emotionally moving scene, and within it culminates the father-son romance of Dante and Virgil, along with many others.

Under a white veil bound with olive bands
A lady appeared to me
…
Then my soul, that had passed so long a time
Since it had felt the crushing glory of
Her presence, and had trembled, mute with awe
…
[I turned] to say to Virgil, “Not a drop of blood
Runs in my veins that isn’t trembling now!
I know the traces of the ancient flame-”
But Virgil had deprived us of his light,
Virgil, the sweetest father…

Dante, seeing Beatrice for the first time, “A lady appeared to me,” since their single encounter upon earth, “my soul, that had passed so long a time / since it had felt the crushing glory of / her presence,” turns to Virgil for comfort as he is overwhelmed by finally meeting his lifelong love. He literally turns toward Virgil, whom he deems “the sweetest father,” desiring once again in his childlike way to draw strength from the faithful shoulders, as well as figuratively turning to him through poetry. In the moment of overwhelmed, giddy excitement, Dante quotes words from Virgil through Dido’s mouth as she confesses her love for Aeneas: “I know the traces of the ancient flame.” A recently translated version of the Aeneid by Sarah Ruden has it: “I recognize the remnants of that flame.” Dante’s quotation of Virgil here, in addition to highlighting their father-son relationship, also serves to comment on the love of Dido and Aeneas being similar to his love of Beatrice: unfulfilled on earth. However, Dante also elevates it, for though Dido and Aeneas couldn’t be reunited because of the separation of death, he and Beatrice can be once again united through the love and grace of God, which transcends death. Thus Dante brings Virgil’s beautiful verse into his own, using it where it ought to be used, that is, in relation to love fulfilled in God, who is Love and Life, to sanctify it. This is the first of many instances where Virgil, though physically absent from Dante now on, will remain present through Dante’s quotation of his poetry.

Led into Paradise by his beloved Beatrice, Dante remembers his abundant love for her, but by no means forgets his sweetest father. Though Virgil was a pagan, Dante insists that he would have loved the true God if he had known of Him, attested to by the mentioning of Virgil’s invocation to God as the true Guide through Purgatory. Therefore, Dante ensures that Virgil may see God through his own eyes which Virgil once cleansed and guided, so that he would have an opportunity to indeed know the God he did not know before Dante. He makes references to Virgil’s poetry through the mention of Aeneas, and again alludes to Virgil in the person of Dido as he enters the sphere of Venus, “Honoring all her line of deities, / the mother Dione, Cupid the son, / saying the child once sat in Dido’s lap.” Recalling the lines of Virgil, “Poor thing, she held him in her lap, / the mighty hidden god. He thought of Venus, / his mother,” Dante’s memory, here, honors Virgil, as well as again raising up his love poetry to the realm of love in Heaven.

In addition to his recollective tributes, we can find Dante searching for a place for Virgil in Paradise, asking,

Upon the Indus’ banks a man is born,
And in that country no one’s there to preach
On Christ, no one to read of Him, or write;
And all his actions and desires are good,
As far as human reason can perceive,
Without a sin in either deed or speech.
He dies unbaptized and without the faith.
Where is the justice that condemns the man?
Where is his fault, if he does not believe?

In asking this question, Dante obviously has Virgil on his mind, and makes a case for him, as a pagan, to come to Heaven, for it was by no fault of his own that he didn’t believe. Surely, if God could have so much mercy on Dante so as to send all of Heaven in the person of Beatrice to recover him from his lost ways, He could have enough mercy on Virgil, who did not lose his way “as far as human reason can perceive,” to bring him to Paradise and give him the opportunity at last to know Him?

The opportunity Virgil finally receives is Dante: God’s grace lifts both of them up through various souls Dante meets in Paradise. One of the souls, a monk and poet named Folquet, names Dido as he speaks, saying, “The people in that land who knew my name / called me Folquet, and now upon this sphere / I stamp my seal, as once it did the same / on me; for Dido never burned so hot.” The stamp he refers to is love, hotter than that of Dido, for it is true, divine love. The beginning of Folquet’s soliloquy serves Dante’s purpose in once again sanctifying the love poetry of Virgil. Even the father of mankind, Adam, directly mentions Virgil in his speech: “In Limbo where your Lady ventured down / to entreat Virgil, for four thousand and / three hundred and two turnings of the sun/ I longed for this assembly.” Adam recalls his stay in Limbo, longing for Heaven where he would once again know God as he did in the beginning, which Dante subtly includes to illustrate his hope that Virgil, also longing in Limbo, would one day be brought up into Heaven.

Dante also places two souls to sanctify Virgil’s poetry describing Arcadia, his version of Heaven, to further incorporate him into Dante’s poetic workings of Paradise. In Canto 15 of the Paradiso, one of Dante’s ancestors, Cacciaguida, approaches him “with such a loving piety for his son, / if we may trust our greater muse, Anchises / once hailed Aeneas in Elysium.” Cacciaguida’s love for Dante serves as a reminder of Virgil’s fatherly love, and thus he cannot help but to once again honor his sweetest of fathers, whom he invokes as “our greater muse,” with a loving memory of his poetry, likening himself to Aeneas, meeting his father Anchises in Elysium: “And when he saw Aeneas making toward him / over the grass, he stretched his hands out, blissful. / The tears poured down his cheeks, and he exclaimed. / “You’ve come at last? Love would win out, I knew.” Here, the reference to Aeneas traveling through the afterlife, though still alive, meeting his father, since passed, is crafted by Dante to perfectly match the meeting he has with Cacciaguida. This is one of Dante’s greatest tributes to Virgil in Paradiso. Finally, Beatrice herself affirms Virgil’s poetry as prefiguring and desiring the one true God, saying, “The stream and every topaz you behold / diving and rising, and the laughing flowers, / are prefaces to truth,” referring to Virgil’s imaginative heavenly afterlife.

Canto 30 of the Paradiso contains an incredible amount of allusions and references to Virgil; as Dante enters the Celestial Rose, the inmost circle of Heaven wherein the Trinity dwells, he uses Virgil’s Arcadia to describe it, which serves as the ultimate sanctification of Virgil’s poetry, previously still searching for God.

And a new power of vision burst aflame-
Nor is there light too radiant and pristine
For sight so strong. And I beheld a stream,
A river of flashing light that flowed between
Two shores the spring had touched with wondrous hues,
Dappled with glimmerings of a golden sheen.
And from that river living glints arose
To settle on the banks with stippling blooms
Like rubies in a rounding ring of gold.

This excerpt helps us to see the pastoral poetry which Dante uses to describe the dwelling place of the Trinity; it bears similarity to Virgil’s pastoral poetry. Additionally, it takes another quote from the Aeneid to erase any illusions as to what is influencing Dante’s poetic construction; the last line echoes Virgil’s verse, “He gleamed like gems in tawny gold.” This aspect of pastoral poetry is Dante’s second to last tribute to Virgil as the poet-pilgrim approaches the final circle of heaven.

Finally, in the last Canto of the Divine Comedy, Dante masterfully uses one last quote from Virgil to show the completion of his poetry in God. “So did they lose the Sibyl’s prophecy / when the wind blew the weightless leaves astray.” This comes from a set of instructions given to Aeneas in Book 3 of the Aeneid:

You’ll see the raving Sibyl in a deep cave.
She chants the future, and with special signs
Marks it on leaves. The virgin puts these verses
In sequence and then locks them in her cave.
They stay there motionless, in perfect order.
But when a hinge turns, and a tender breeze
Falls on that flimsy foliage and disturbs it,
She doesn’t chase its flutters through her cavern,
Or link the lines back in their proper order.

The mighty power of God beheld in the final verses of the Divine Comedy blows away all vice, mistrust, hatred, disunity, and paganism. But Dante has come too far with Virgil now to allow him and his poetry to be wasted away on a breath of wind like crinkling, dead, leaves. He grasps the truths of Virgil’s poetry as the paganism falls away and immortalizes them in his own construction of the journey of love, oriented towards God, its proper end. As Virgil clasped Dante in his arms as he struggled to mount Geryon, so now does Dante hold his father close to his heart and raises him up to the God he was incapable of seeing previously. Because of Dante, Virgil’s verses are not the ramblings of a mortal pagan sibyl, blown away upon a wind and forgotten, but are the immortal strings upon which Dante plays to sing of divine love. When Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven culminates in the moment of beholding the Trinity, he does not quote Beatrice, nor does he quote Church fathers or saints: he quotes Virgil. This is the apex of Dante’s filial love for Virgil: he will not leave his father behind in paganism and Limbo but has gone to every extent to bring Virgil up with him. Dante’s resurrection is completed as he beholds God, the fount of life, and so is Virgil’s resurrection accomplished. He lives within the heart and mind of Dante, both of which come together to foster loving memories, and rises to new life as his poetry takes on the form of Dante’s theological epic, thus completing his work lacking only the knowledge of the true God.

Let us briefly summarize this beautiful journey of love. Firstly, Dante is lost and requires a guide to carry him through Hell, where he will find the renewal of his love. Virgil is sent to him, and their relationship builds to its culmination of forgiveness between father and son, which frees them from the bondage of Hell. The journey through Purgatory serves as the pivot point between the conversion of Dante and the rescue of Virgil: the antique poet begins to learn of God as he accompanies Dante, who still relies on him heavily. But towards the end, even as Virgil seemingly disappears, Dante continues to quote him, giving him life through the revival of his poetry in Christian context. Then, the ascent into Heaven is as much a rescue mission for Virgil as the descent into Hell was for Dante. Speaking through various souls and references, Dante does everything he can to ensure that Virgil will be brought into Heaven with him; he joins Virgil’s poetry to the God that it was once separated from and becomes his guiding sight as once Virgil was to him. Through the love of Dante for Virgil, the saving love of Virgil in the Inferno and Purgatorio to Dante is reciprocated by Dante as he rescues his dear father from the shortcomings and emptiness of paganism.

There is no doubt in Dante’s mind that Virgil remains with him as he had promised in the depths of Hell, assuring him, “Be sure that I am ever at your side,” and I hope that you have been convinced of this, too. The intimate love which the two poets share, the heart wrenching, bittersweet “separation,” and the powerful way in which Dante rescues his guide and father from the scattering of paganism serves as Dante’s testimony to the transcendence of love and poetry, its prime expression. Not only is he joined to his guide in love surpassing the time and space that once separated them, but he is also joined to him as a son to his father, and their love surpasses even the bonds of death, that of paganism and sin, to be forever united in their resurrection in Christianity. Dante’s theology of love is none other than this journey. His developing father-son relationship with Virgil bears testimony to the necessity of relationships of trust and love to stimulate the heart, that its love may overflow and then be oriented towards God, living in others: the climb up Mount Purgatory. Finally, the way Dante so tenderly and determinedly carries Virgil with him to Paradise, sanctifying his poetry by using it in the most honorable and Christian setting he can fathom, is Dante’s unspoken theology of loving memory which immortalizes even those no longer physically present through the action of the heart and mind working in conjunction. And as Dante so often pulls from his memory those verses of Virgil’s love songs which he had studied for so long to describe the unfolding of Paradise before him, it is as if he were calling to his sweetest father Virgil: See, you were here all along; you simply needed my eyes to see it!

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