PURGATORIO, Episode 85. Oderisi Redux: PURGATORIO, Canto XI, Lines 73 - 108

I said we'd move on to the second half of Oderisi da Gubbio's speech . . . but there's no way we can. There are still so many unanswered questions about the way Dante cryptically inserts himself into the text, the way the art of miniaturization reflects the new style in poetry that Dante practices, and the very fact that Dante meets someone whose life is spent with manuscripts.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work our way through more questions about the first half of Oderisi's speech in PURGATORIO.

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

[01:57] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XI, lines 73 - 108. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation (yes, please!), just scroll down this page.

[04:46] Oderisi and Franco are indeed mentioned by others but mostly centuries after Dante. And for what it's worth, is Dante even writing a history-based poem?

[06:48] Oderisi calls Dante the pilgrim "brother"--as in monastic brotherhood or as in the talk of artistic guilds?

[08:32] Dante puts the prophetic denunciation in the mouth of a character, rather than in the poet's interpolation.

[12:38] Dante meets a miniaturist, an illuminator . . . and the new style of poetry was mostly practiced in small poems like sonnets and canzone.

[17:34] In my interpretation, Dante the poet remains unnamed in the tercet about the Guidos. Should we see a psychological or artistic development here?

[22:13] Dante meets an illuminator, the sort who our poet might hope would someday work on COMEDY.

And once again, here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XI, Lines 73 – 108

As I listened, I bowed down my face.

Then one of them, and not this guy who spoke,

Contorted himself beneath the weight that held him down.

He saw me and recognized me and called out to me,

Even though he had a tough time keeping his eyes

On me as I went along with them all hunched over.

“Oh,” I said to him, “aren’t you Oderisi,

The honor of Gubbio and the honor of that art

Which is called ‘illumination’ in Paris?”

“Brother,” he said, “pages like those laugh even more

Because of the brush strokes of the Bolognese Franco.

The honor’s all his . . . and only mine in part.

“Truth be told, I’d hardly have been this accommodating

While I was alive because the great desire

To excel held my heart in a tight grip.

“We pay our debt here because of just this sort of pride.

I wouldn’t even yet be at this point, except that while it could be done

And I still had the ability to sin, I turned toward God.

“Oh, the empty glory of human capabilities!

For such a short time the green lasts on the summit

Even if a foul age comes at its heels.

“In painting, Cimabue believed

He held the field. And now it’s Giotto that gets the cheers—

So much so that the other’s fame has dimmed.

“In like manner, one Guido has taken the glory

Of our mother tongue from another—and maybe someone has been born

Who will drive first the one and then the other from the nest.

“The world’s renown is no more than a blustery wind,

Blowing from one spot, then another,

Changing its name with every direction.

“Will greater honor be yours if you strip off your flesh

When you’re old rather than if you’d died

While you still had Pappo and Dindi on your lips

“After a thousand years have gone by? That’s a shorter span of time

Than the blink of an eye when compared to eternity, and not much

When compared to the rotation of even the slowest celestial sphere.”