You will only stay here briefly as a stranger,
Then you will always be my citizen
In that Rome where Christ is a Roman.
Here, you will become a forest in a short time;
You will be with me forever
Christ is the Rome of Rome.
(Purgatory 32, 100-102)
The religious concepts of purgatory and purgatory have disappeared in enlightened Christianity. Postmodern believers, regardless of denomination, can hardly believe that there must be a place and time for purification before the sinful soul itself is fully suitable for heaven in order to obtain eternal salvation. Only in Naples, the passage from earthly life to heaven is staged and prayed in the underground passages and tombs of the city.
But when Dante wrote the Divine Comedy at the beginning of the 14th century and placed the purification mountain, purgatory, between hell and heaven as a place for purification and purification process, he was using a theological theme, which was actually the time of a new invention . The Bible knows nothing about such a place, and the supporters of Luther, who recently criticized the Pope, are skeptical of this medieval invention, because for them salvation through repentance, indulgence, and justice seems to be an attempt to manipulate the sacred Grace. On the other hand, along with Dante, those who are aware of their sins and are ready to repent, begin a pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain, to the Garden of Eden, and from there to heaven on the other side.
Exactly a hundred years ago, the promise of purification and (re)uplifting was at the center of German thinking about the celebration of the 600th anniversary of Dante’s death. After the failed world war and the shameful peace of Versailles, Dante appeared before many Germans as a pioneer of light in 1921. “Mountain of Purification” is the title of Ernst Troeltsch’s celebration speech, in which he stated that Dante can “relapse into deep need, humiliation and dismemberment in our motherland, and awaken peace The era that shakes all their thoughts” provides guidance. The deepest part”.
In fact, purgatory has everything. In fact, the second part of the Divine Comedy should be particularly suitable for modern sensitivity due to its “paragraph” feature. Because its undetermined position is somewhere in between, somehow it seems to be more Italian, more compromised, and more humane than the other two worlds-extreme hell and paradise. It’s not just the images here that are breathtaking. On Qingjing Mountain, the poet was ordered to write down what he saw during his later hikes. This is how his work of the century was born. There is also a poem of Dante, whose fate is like a magnifying glass, revealing the infinite interpretation, appropriation and instrumentalization of this classic work.
