Dante's Purgatorio also finds a wider
circle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling and
aspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibit
more human interest than the saints confirmed in grace against human
weakness.
Another reason for lesser interest manifested in this part of the Divina
Commedia is the difficulty and obscurity of the Paradiso. It is not easy
reading, because it requires study, repetition, concentration,
meditation, qualities absent from the art of reading as it prevails
today. If we ever have time to look at a book, the habit of skimming
with inattentive rapidity so urges us onward that we find ourselves
flitting from page to page, from chapter to chapter, panting and
uninstructed. And if we belong to the bookless majority who have no time
to read, we rush to the moving picture theatre to get our mental
pabulum--often a season's best seller--boiled down, served in
rapid-fire order and bolted in the twinkling of an eye. For all such
Dante's Paradiso is an intellectual as well as a spiritual impossibility
and the poet begs such not to follow him on his voyage to the eternal
kingdom.
"Oh ye who in some pretty little boat
Eager to listen, have been following
Behind my ship, that singing sails along,
Turn back to look again upon your shores;
In losing me, you might yourselves be lost.
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