Throughout Dante's Inferno and Purgatory, the theme of love is often addressed. Between the two works, it becomes clear that Dante's notion of love is divided into two parts: natural love and elective love. Natural Love is not wrong – that is, it will not lead you to sin and is closely related, if not interchangeable, with the concept of Divine Love. God is, however, a loving God and gives us the power to choose; this is why we also love electively. Elective Love leaves us free to love anyone as we please, and we must learn to desire worthy things if we are to live without sin. Not understanding this, or moving away from it, leads us to err. Natural Love inspires Elective Love, and if we do not learn to tend towards Natural Love, then we end up in Hell; likewise, if we learn too late, we must spend time repenting. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In the second canticle of the Divine Comedy, Dante's definition of love takes a theological stance. In Purgatory (particularly cantos 21-24), love is described as something that ultimately comes from God. This natural love is virtuous, and by following it we cannot sin. This notion of pure love is best illustrated in Virgil's interaction with the shadow Statius. As the pilgrim climbs higher on Mount Purgatory, we reach the fifth terrace, on which the misers and the prodigals seek forgiveness. Towards the end of Canto 21, we meet Statius who has just finished his stay in Purgatory. Before his death he had read Virgil and he attributes his salvation to Virgil's writings. When the pilgrim and his guide first meet Statius, he does not recognize Virgil, and he explains that he would gladly spend more time repenting if it meant he could have met Virgil (Purgatorio 21, 100-102 ) -- ironic, given that he expresses these wishes directly to Virgil. Upon discovering that he is in Virgil's presence, Statius leans over to kiss him (Purgatorio 21, 130). Virgil berates him because they are shadows and cannot feel. Here we see that Statius's love for Virgil is so great that it makes him forget their emptiness (Purgatorio 21, 135). This example of natural and noble love is explained in more detail by Virgil in Canto 22. He speaks of natural love, saying that: "Love kindled by virtue always kindles another love, as long as its flame appears externally” (Purgatorio 22, 10-12). Declaring that his affection for Statius “was greater than any other affection ever felt for a person whom one had not seen” (Purgatorio 22, 16). This demonstrates an inspiring and nourished love born of virtue. This only relies on the fact that Statius's love for Virgil was born of good intentions and therefore grew in Virgil himself. We know that Statius's love is noble because God allowed it to reach Virgil in Hell. This virtuous love, coupled with the end of his stay in Purgatory, shows us that Statius learned to desire worthy things unlike what he had done in life. In life, Statius wasted and “loved” too much. This idea that we can love too little or too much is another way in which elective love can lead us astray. Another way in which this division of love is illustrated is in Dante's encounter with Bontaguntia. As the two discuss the "Sweet New Style", Dante tells him that he is "he who, when Love breathes in me, takes note, and according to the measure that he dictates inwardly, I will mean" (Purgatorio 24,52-54). By this Dante means that when love inspires him, he must make it known through poetry. Bontaguntia realizes that this is what prevented him from being a poet of the new style. While Dante and his contemporaries were led to write by Divine Love, their predecessors simply wrote about Divine Love. Further into Purgatory, we meet heterosexuals and homosexuals. Their crime in life was not respecting human laws. The example used - Pasiphae, who fell in love with a bull and disguised herself as a cow so that the bull would run towards her (Purgatorio 26, 41) - describes how, when she abandons herself to Elective Love, she can effectively pervert Nature. Love. Guinizelli explains that they are here because they followed their appetites like beasts (Purgatorio 26, 83) and gave themselves over to primitive lust. This discussion of primordial love in Purgatory brings up an interesting connection with the gates of Hell in Inferno. The Gates proclaim that Hell was created from "Primordial Love" by Divine Power. Knowing what we now know about primal and animal love and its connection to elective love, we can assume that the denizens of hell have completely broken with human law. Because of their inability to understand love – which Dante believes is the key to keeping elective Love on a worthy path – our poor sinners come to remain in Hell. This distinction between misrepresenting love and completely misunderstanding it is best explained by going back and looking. to Hell. In The Inferno, the idea that we pervert love by choosing to walk away is made clear. This does not mean that this choice is a conscious or calculated one. By simply not striving to understand or learn what they do not understand, people make a choice. In some cases, these souls do not even know that they are failing to understand correctly, and this incorrect firmness condemns them for eternity. Instead of seeking bliss, they strive to fulfill human vices, thus turning their backs on virtue. For example, the gluttons of canto 6 loved excessively and replaced beatification with the good of the world. Those guilty of laziness, the sullen ones of Canto 7, were guilty of loving too little. In canto 26, the pilgrim meets Odysseus, who betrayed love by promising his crew virtue (Hell 26, 112-120), something no journey could achieve. Love is born from virtue and, therefore, by transforming virtue into human vice, love is perverted. The most poetic example of all, however, is the lecherous Francesca. Stuck in the “infernal whirlwind” of the third circle of Hell, she is guilty of perverting love. Francesca betrayed true Love by failing to understand it. In her speech to the pilgrim, she explains to the pilgrim that: Love, which quickly kindles in the noble heart, has taken possession of it for the beautiful/person who has been taken from me; and this way still hurts me. / Love, which does not forgive any loved one for loving in return, has grabbed me so strongly for its / beauty that, as you see, it still does not abandon me. (Inferno 5, 11-105) Here Francesca advances the argument that love “took hold” of Paolo once he saw Francesca’s beautiful body. She further argues that since Paolo loves her, she had no hope of rejecting his affection since Love "forgives no one." Francesca's revenge is therefore no more voluntary than Paolo's desire. The glaring "Easter egg" here is that almost nothing in this speech is Francesca's original thought. She is inspired by the fiction of her time, whether it is Lancelot du Lac or Dolce Stil Novo. Before we know it, we experienceterrible sympathy for Francesca, but once pointed out, it's our first clue to her true sins. His moving but “plagiarized” speech reveals nothing about Paolo, not even his name. Francesca is “in love” with Paolo’s charm and beauty. Francesca “subjected her reason to [his] lust” (Hell 5, 38) and renounced her ability to learn. By mistaking lust for Love, Francesca has distorted the ideal. Her second error lies in the fact that she does not admit her guilt, and instead blames Love itself (we must here assume that she means Divine Love, not Elective), which should inspire us. She believes that her love was "noble", something that cannot be true because, if it were noble, she would not have confused her desire with true Love. So why is Francesca sidelined, among all the other victims in this story? circle? After all, it is here that figures such as Cleopatra, Dido and Semiramis are damned, guilty of crimes far worse than Francesca's desire. This is where the differences between natural and elective love become clear. Francesca expresses that love was imposed on her by the Almighty, stating that since she was loved, nothing would stop her from returning the love, regardless of her virtuous intention. We feel that love is imposed on the person and based on physical attributes. We later learn in Virgil's Purgatorio that true love has nothing to do with appearances and that love need not be reciprocated in principle. On the contrary, Virgil tells us that if someone loves us virtuously, as if coming out of Natural Love, then this love will also be inspired in us. Love does not impose itself on anyone and is not at all its agent. We, as humans, are the agents, and we can only inspire, not force, love in others. This notion further separates Natural Love and Elective Love, because in the case of Natural Love, the love of the Almighty is a given – although not forced. Virgil's last description – “as long as his flame appears outwardly” (Purgatorio 22, 12) – gives us an idea of ​​why Odysseus' contrapasso had to be consumed in the flame for a desire “that burns him inwardly” (Hell 26, 47-8). His desires, virtuous or not, consumed him and were neither expressed nor acknowledged. As Dante, the pilgrim, “was going to signify” (Purgatorio 24, 52-4), once Love inspired him, Odysseus should have done so. Perhaps he would then have understood that the true intentions of Love were born from virtue instead of considering virtue as an end to love. The sins mentioned earlier, gluttony and sloth, are addressed in both Songs. The disparity lies in the soul's ability to understand that it has gone astray. In Hell, the condemned never think that their conception of love is incorrect, nor do they realize that they have gone astray. They believe that what they were seeking was the true end of love, in the case of the Gluttons, or that they failed to fully appreciate Natural Love, in the case of the Sloths. On Mount Purgatory, souls realized that they had strayed and began to return to Natural Love, but their perversion of love prevented them from being blessed. That is, they realized their mistakes, but it was simply too late. Through these examples, Dante shows us how Natural Love, which is not mistaken, can lead to Elective Love and sin. Natural Love, which concerns beatification and the Almighty, is the path we are meant to choose through Elective Love; however, since Elective Love is after all elective, this does not always happen. The biggest mistake we can make here, as Francesca tells us.