PURGATORIO, Episode 117. Hunger, Light, Love, And The Theology Of Abundance: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, Lines 58 - 84

Dante the pilgrim has gotten one answer out of Virgil about the nature of abundance and scarcity in terms of heavenly good . . . but that answer was not apparently enough. So he goes back for more.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this continuation of Virgil's lesson between the second and third terraces of Purgatory proper. As we leave the envious behind, Virgil offers us a lesson in the unending and multiplying faculty of love.

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

[01:41] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 58 - 84. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:28] The food and agrarian imagery in the passage: desire and its satisfaction.

[08:18] The light imagery in this passage: links back to the opening of Canto XV, as well as to Aquinas' SUMMA and Dante's own CONVIVIO.

[14:58] Profit: the motive or idea of multiplicity has been in Canto XV all along.

[16:31] Virgil: a character of Dante the poet's mouthpiece?

[20:38] The plot returns (sort of) by a redefinition of the problem of pain.

[24:28] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 58 - 84.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XV, Lines 58 – 84

I said, “I’m even hungrier to be satisfied

Than if you’d remained silent in the first place.

You see, I’m harvesting more doubts in my mind.

“How can it be that one good is then distributed

Among so many possessors? How can it make them

All richer if only a few possess it?”

And he [replied] to me: “Because you still jam

Your mind strictly into worldly things,

You pluck darkness out of the true light.

“Up there lies the infinite and ineffable Good.

It runs to love

Just as a ray of light comes to something that can be lit up.

“It gives back as much love as it finds.

So that however much love is brought forth,

The eternal valor will add that much more to it.

“So when people love each other up there,

The more there is to love well—in fact, the more love there is.

Like a mirror, each reflects back to each.

“If my explanation doesn’t sate you,

You will see Beatrice. She’ll totally take away

This and every other quandary you have.

“Work hard so that the remaining five wounds

Will be erased, as the first two were.

They are healed by hurting.”

I was about to say, You’ve filled me up,

But I realized I’d arrived on the next ledge

And my inquisitive eyes made me fall silent.