The Concept of Love in Dantes Purgatorio
The Concept of Love in The Purgatorio A significant idea contained within Dante's The Divine Comedy is the Augustinian concept of ordered and disordered love. Each realm of the afterlife symbolizes the type of love the inhabitants exercised while they were living on earth. For example, the Inferno represents disordered love, since the souls in Hell exhibited little love for mankind and little acknowledgement of God. Because the kind of love Hell symbolizes is the worst type that anyone could possess, it is located nearest to the center of the earth, farthest away from God. On the other hand, Paradise, which is situated closest to God, represents ordered love. This area is reserved for those who treated their neighbors well and felt connected to God. Although they sinned during their lifetimes, they fully repented long before death. However, Purgatory is unlike Paradise or the Inferno. Since the inhabitants of Purgatory were those who started to repent later in their lifetimes, but still often only thought of their own individual needs and corporeal pleasures, it only makes sense that this world be in between Heaven and Hell. Purgatory, being a "gray area" (that is, neither all good or all bad), represents a type of
In each case this sort of love lies in between order and disorder. As punishment, God makes these sinners wait in Purgatory in the same way they made Him wait. Since wrath is often carried out as a form of anger because of vengeance, it lacks all humility, polluting the true spirit of God. Since they ate and drank in excess while living, their reprimand in the Sixth Cornice is complete emaciation, a horrific physical punishment. Since they abused food and drink, now they must starve as a purification mechanism to ascend into Heaven. Envy, which in modern times is described as the "green-eyed monster", is generally a sin one commits with his eyes. Whether these indulgences are physical or psychological, they are hindrances to achieving the ultimate end of man, which is happiness. This sin is considered the worst of its kind because the hoarders and wasters are not even gaining any sense of satisfaction from their practices, even if it were to be temporal. Based on the Seven Deadly Sins, each cornice in Purgatory contains a varying amount of ordered love and disordered love. Continuing with the idea of "bad love", Dante then explains envy, represented in the Second Cornice. However, since Dante knows that the flesh is weak, a mere entrapment of the soul, he forgives these bodily sins to some extent. The second type of love explored in The Purgatorio is termed "too little love", which lends itself exclusively to the sin of sloth. These temporal pleasures prevent man from developing a good relationship with God. They involve man loving self-pleasures more than God. Bad love, the worst of the three, coincides to the first three Cornices that represent the sins of pride, envy, and wrath respectively.
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