PURGATORY
DANTE’S DIVINE TRILOGY PART 2
ENGLISHED IN PROSAIC VERSE
BY
ALASDAIR GRAY
CANONGATE BOOKS
EDINBURGH 2019
First published in Great Britain, the USA and
Canada in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West
and in Canada by Publishers Group Canada
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Alasdair Gray, 2019
The right of Alasdair Gray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 473 1
eISBN 978 1 78689 476 2
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD
Hell is underground, Heaven high above. Where on Earth is Purgatory? No heretics believed in it. Thomas Aquinas called it a fact human reason could not locate so should leave to God. Dante never feared imagining more than orthodox Catholics, and by combining their theology with Pagan science he placed Purgatory firmly where we place Australia.
Greeks and Romans had no evidence of land outside Europe, Asia and Africa, so thought a vast ocean covered the rest of the globe. Their geographers deduced that the polar regions furthest from the sun were too cold to support life, and the equator nearest the sun was too hot. Some wondered if the south temperate zone supported life but were sure this could never be known, as the equator would roast or boil explorers trying to cross. This meant Atlantic voyages could discover nothing good, so across the Strait of Gibraltar they imagined a sign: THUS FAR AND NO FURTHER. Dante decided this was a divine prohibition, because shortly before his time Italian merchants sought a faster way than overland to import Indian spices and Chinese silk. They sailed out past Gibraltar meaning to circumnavigate Africa and never returned.
This enforced Dante’s Catholic cosmography. When God expelled the rebel angels (said theologians) they fell into an underground pit He had prepared for them. Dante described Hell as a conical space, the point at the centre of the world where Satan was stuck like a worm in a bad apple. Matter that formerly filled Hell’s cavity had been expelled as an island-mountain in the south’s ocean, exactly opposite Jerusalem in the north land mass. This was Purgatory, ringed by terraces with steep cliffs between, the lowest cliff surrounded by a coastal plain for new arrivals. Round the low cliff trudged sinful souls saved from Hell by last-minute repentances, but delayed from climbing to Heaven by excommunication. From a cave in that cliff Virgil led Dante after they ascended from
Hell, as my cover design tries to show.
LIST OF CANTOS