“And of that second realm my song will treat, which is the human spirit’s purifier and to ascend to heaven makes it fit."
. . . . .
Having left Hell behind, Dante will now speak of Purgatory, the realm where souls cleanse themselves for Heaven. He invokes the Muses, specifically Calliope. After the darkness of the infernal realm, the blue skies above Purgatory refresh Dante. He is in the Southern Hemisphere, and he sees four stars that nobody else has ever seen, except for Adam and Eve. Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry, hence Dante’s invocation of her at the beginning of this Cantica. According to Dante’s geography, the Earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden, is located at the summit of Purgatory. In Dante’s mind, after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, nobody else lived in this Hemisphere. The stars symbolize the so-called cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude—virtues that pagans, uninformed by Christian grace, could practice. Dante’s favorable view of Cato also hints at his personal belief in political freedom. Dalí’s angel is modelled after his 1936 Venus de Milo, the first in a series of “anthropomorphic cabinets” with drawers.