PURGATORIO, Episode 137. Love Explains Purgatory Itself: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, Lines 106 - 126

Virgil continues his discourse about love, the central discourse in all of COMEDY. It's a tour de force of scholastic reasoning . . . that may leave something to be desired after INFERNO.

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

[01:42] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, lines 106 - 126. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:08] Virgil's scholastic background in the text.

[08:01] Virgil's two premises: no one can hate their own self or the first cause (that is, God).

[11:33] Virgil's understanding of the three terraces of Purgatory below us.

[16:12] Can Virgil be a scholastic thinker? What do we make of this very oracular Virgil?

[20:39] Virgil's argument is less a celebration of Aquinas and more one of Aristotle.

[22:48] Love may move the fence, but love doesn't tear down the fence.

[26:46] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, lines 106 - 126.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XVII, Lines 106 – 126

[Virgil continued:] “What’s more, because love can never turn its face

Away from the welfare of its own subject,

Everything is free from hating itself.

“And because nothing can be thought up which exists in and of itself,

And [nothing can be] divided from the first cause,

Everything is exempt from hating him.

“If I’ve divvied up things properly, what’s left

Is the evil-from-love that’s done to one’s neighbor.

This love is born from your muck in three ways.

“There are the ones who hope for supremacy

By shoving their neighbors down. Only for this reason [do they]

Desire that the other’s greatness be brought low.

“There are the ones who fear to lose power, favor, honor, or fame,

Because another climbs higher—

These are so resentful that they love the contrary direction.

“And there are the ones who seem so outraged

By injury that they turn greedy for vendetta.

These figure out how to hurt others.

“This tripartite division of love is lamented

Down below us. Now I want you to consider the other—[that is,]

The love that runs after the good from a rotted sense of order.”