But Dante’s journey has just begun. In Purgatorio, he must summit a massive mountain. Success in that struggle leaves him facing, along with other sinners, a wall of flames that inflict purifying pain but not death. Only then does Paradise await—and it’s not just around the corner. He must travel past the planets and fixed stars to a rose-shaped empyrean. Tackling this culminating challenge in the company of his beloved Beatrice, who inspired the poem, Dante must trasumanar, a magnificent word that he invents to describe the experience of passing beyond what’s human.