The Entrance into the Earthly Paradise

The Entrance into the Earthly Paradise is the climactic threshold of Dante's journey through Purgatory, the point at which he leaves the seven terraces of penitential discipline behind and enters the primordial garden that was humanity's first home before the Fall. This event, narrated in Purgatorio Canto XXVIII, marks the decisive transition from the purgatorial to the paradisiacal state, and it introduces the figure of Matilda, who serves as Dante's guide through this sacred landscape and explains the nature of its miraculous features.

The Arrival in the Heavenly Forest

Eager to explore the "heavenly forest, dense and living-green," Dante leaves the bank where Virgil had crowned and mitred him and takes the level ground slowly, savoring the air that "everywhere breathes fragrance." A softly-breathing air, without mutation, strikes his forehead no heavier than a gentle wind, causing the branches to bow downward toward the side where the Holy Mountain casts its first shadow. The little birds upon the tops of the branches sing with full ravishment, receiving the hours of prime in the midst of leaves that bear a burden to their rhymes. Dante's slow steps carry him so far into the ancient wood that he cannot perceive where he entered it. His further course is then cut off by a stream whose little waves bend down the grass on its margin toward the left. The water is so pure that all earthly waters would seem to have some mixture in comparison, though it moves with a brown, brown current under the perpetual shade that never lets in a ray of the sun nor of the moon.

The Encounter with Matilda

Staying his feet, Dante passes with his eyes beyond the rivulet to look upon the great variety of the fresh May. There appears to him, suddenly turning aside every other thought through wonder, a lady all alone, going along singing and culling floweret after floweret, with which her pathway is all painted over. Dante addresses her, saying that she makes him remember where and what Proserpina was at the moment when her mother lost her and she herself lost the Spring. The lady turns toward him like a dancer who hardly puts one foot before the other, on the vermilion and yellow flowerets, not otherwise than a maiden who casts down her modest eyes. She approaches so near that the dulcet sound of her singing comes to Dante together with its meaning. When she is where the grasses are bathed by the waters of the beauteous river, she grants him the boon of lifting her eyes. Dante thinks that not even Venus, when transfixed by her own son, shone with so great a light. Erect upon the other bank, she smiles, bearing full many colors in her hands that the high land produces without seed. The river makes them three paces apart, and Dante feels more hatred for it than Leander felt for the Hellespont that rolled between Sestos and Abydos, because it does not open to let him cross.

Matilda's Discourse on the Nature of the Earthly Paradise

Matilda begins by addressing Dante and his companions as new-comers, and she explains that the psalm "Delectasti" gives light to uncloud their intellect. She then relates how the Good Supreme, sole in itself delighting, created man good and gave him this goodly place as a hansel of eternal peace. By his default, man sojourned here but a short while, changing his innocent laughter and sweet play to weeping and toil. The mountain ascended toward heaven so high, and is exempt from the disturbances caused by exhalations of land and water, so that they might not wage war upon mankind. The universal atmosphere, turning in a circuit with the primal motion, strikes upon this height and makes the forest sound, and the stricken plant impregns the air with its virtue, which the revolving air scatters around. The earth below, according to its worth, conceives and bears the divers trees. The water that Dante sees does not spring from a vein restored by vapor that the cold condenses, but issues from a fountain safe and certain, which by the will of God as much regains as it discharges, open on two sides. On one side it descends with virtue that takes away all memory of sin; on the other, it restores the memory of every good deed done. The river is called Lethe on the one side and Eunoe on the other, and it works not unless first tasted on either side. Matilda concludes by saying that those who in ancient times feigned the Age of Gold and its felicity in song dreamed of this place perhaps upon Parnassus. Here was the human race in innocence; here evermore was Spring and every fruit; this is the nectar of which each one speaks. Dante then turns back to his Poets and sees that they have been listening with a smile, before turning his eyes again to the beautiful lady.