PURGATORIO, Episode 73. Screeching And Singing Into Purgatory Proper: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, Lines 130 - 145

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Dante and Virgil finally walk through the gate into Purgatory . . . in one of the most complex endings of any canto in all of COMEDY. There's tragedy and comedy, classical leaning and Christian resolution, emotional distress and safety, screeching and singing, tyranny and polyphony, all tied up together in a passage that has tripped scholars for seven hundred years.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at the ins and outs of this most complex ending to Canto IX of PURGATORIO. This canto is worth the admission into the poem . . . and into the realms of the redeemed souls, too.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:35] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, lines 130 - 145. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment to continue the conversation, please scroll down this page.

[03:40] The angel's warning: Lot's wife vs. Orpheus and Eurydice.

[08:44] Virgil's increasingly tenuous spot in PURGATORIO.

[10:53] The tough parts of this passage: an amalgam of Roman history, Lucan's PHARSALIA, and Virgil's AENEID.

[14:50] An interpretation of the negative tonalities in the imagery and Dante's role as Julius, the looter.

[18:59] The hymn sung and the entrance into a monastic space.

[21:54] Polyphony, a new poetic language, and the difficulties ahead.

[26:56] Rereading all of PURGATORIO, Canto IX.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto IX, Lines 130 – 145

 Then [the angel] pushed open the door itself in the holy gate

And said, “Go in! But I must warn you both

That anyone who looks back will be made to turn back.”

And when that sacred door’s pins,

Which were strong and sounded out with lots of metallic noise,

Turned in their hinges,

The Tarpeian rock didn’t scream so loud

Nor seem so hard as when the good Metellus

Was drawn off and it was all left barren.

I wheeled around to pay attention to a new sound

And I seemed to hear Te Deum Laudamus

In a polyphony of voices with a sweet tonality.

It’s the same sort of experience I have

When I hear singers

Who are accompanied by an organ—

That is, some words are understandable and others are not.