128–30) that tie the ingenium (genius) of the poet, treating his material, to the voyage of a ship over difficult waters. Dante’s ship, for now, is a small one (but cf. Par. II.1–3, where it is implicitly a much larger vessel), raising its sails over better (“smoother”) “water” than it traversed in hell. While this metaphor will be important in Paradiso (II.1–18; XXXIII.94–96), framing that cantica and representing the voyage as a whole, it was only implicit in Inferno (as at Inf. I.22–24). Once again we see Dante adding elements retroactively as the poem advances; we are now asked to understand that it has been, in metaphor, a ship all along, that hell is to be understood as a “sea” in retrospect. [return to English / Italian] 4–6. The second tercet encapsulates the entire cantica: purgatory is that place in which the human spirit becomes fit for Heaven. There is no longer a possibility, among the spirits whom we shall meet, of damnation. Thus two-thirds of the Commedia, its final two cantiche, are dedicated to the saved, first in potentia, then in re.
