Something So Beautiful

In this scene, we re-connect with Dante’s Divine Comedy in a truly profound manner. The translation of the Opera segment played in the prison yard, The Marriage of Figaro is: “On the breeze…what a gentle little zephyr…this evening will sign…Under the pine trees…and the rest he’ll understand.” These lines closely resemble the following from the Song of Songs:

“When the day’s cool breeze comes up and the shadows lengthen, [evening] I will get myself to the mountain of myrrh to the hill of Frankincense. Everything about you is beautiful, my love; you are without a flaw” (Song of Songs 4:6-7 CJB).

            Both the Opera and the Song of Songs reference a breeze that is either gentle or cool and a meeting that is to take place in the evening. The sublimity, the thing that is “so beautiful that it can’t be expressed in words” is revealed in the next verse from the Song of Songs: “Come with me from Lebanon my Bride” (Song of Songs 4:8).

As we will see, when Red arrives in Buxton, elements from this scene will merge with symbolism from the later cantos of Purgatory to portray the successful Redemption of the Divine and human, the Bride-Bridegroom. The line in Andy’s letter, “if you’re willing to come a bit farther” (as “Come with me”) invites Red to a meeting of Cosmic proportion; the symbolic “mystic marriage.”