PURGATORIO, Episode 112. Two More Voices On The Winds Of Envy: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, Lines 127 - 141

With Guido del Duca enmeshed in his tears, Dante the pilgrim and Virgil begin to talk on along the terrace of envy, searching for a way up to the third terrace of Purgatory.

Lo and behold, they're struck by two voices, just as they were when they got up to this terrace. This time, it's Cain and Aglauros, speaking on the wind.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we begin to conclude our time with the envious and encounter a Biblical and a classical voice to warn us of the final dangers of envy.

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

[01:23] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 127 - 141. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation, please scroll down this page.

[02:46] Silence, then the first departing voice from the terrace of the envious: Cain, after his fratricide and banishment.

[09:35] The second departing voice from the terrace of envy: Aglauros, from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES.

[15:37] Dante sidesteps toward Virgil, an unusual move.

[17:49] Comparing and contrasting the four voices on the wind along the terrace of the envious.

[21:07] Is nostalgia an appropriate response to social inequality and its prompting of envy?

[24:58] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIV, lines 127 - 141.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XIV, Lines 127 – 141

We knew that those precious souls

Could sense that we were walking away. Thus, since they’d hushed up,

We were made confident of our journey ahead.

When we had gone so far as to be on our own,

A voice struck against us like a lightning flash

That splits the air, saying,

“Whoever finds me kills me!”

It fled as a clap of thunder fades out

Immediately after a cloudburst.

When our hearing reached a truce with that first voice,

Lo and behold, another one came with so big a fracas

That it seemed like successive thunder claps:

“I am Aglauros who was turned into stone!”

At that point, to get closer to my poet,

I took a step to the right, not forward.