PURGATORIO, Episode 162. Hugh Capet's Antiphon: PURGATORIO, Canto XX, Lines 97 - 123

Hugh Capet has spent a long time answering the pilgrim Dante's first question: who were you? He now turns to the pilgrim's second question: why did I only hear your voice on this terrace?

In doing so, Hugh begins to sing antiphonally . . . or at least, he begins to list off those who have been done in by avarice, the quickest and tightest list of figures in PURGATORIO.

Why is this list so full of figures yet so curt in its style? And why does Hugh seem to come to the end of his speech so abruptly?

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

[01:31] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XX, lines 97 - 123. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:01] Hugh's abrupt transition from one answer to his second.

[08:46] Our questions about glossing and polyphony.

[12:29] Hugh Capet's brief list of the tragic figures of avarice.

[22:18] Spurred to what? Your own choice?

[26:26] Two rationales for the shortness of these lines about the greedy figures.

[30:11] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XX, lines 97 - 123.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XX, Lines 97 – 123

“Whatever I said about the only bride

Of the Holy Spirit, the bit that made you

Turn to me for some sort of gloss,

“Is the answer to all of our prayers,

So long as the day lasts. But when night falls,

We put on a contrary voice.

“That’s when we recall Pygmalion,

Whose gluttony for gold made him

A traitor, a thief, and a parricide.

“[We also recall] the miserable state of the acquisitive Midas.

It happened because of his greedy request.

For that, he’ll always suffer ridicule.

“And each remembers the foolish Achan

[And] the way he stole so many of the spoils that the anger

Of Joshua seems to go on biting him.

“And we accuse Sapphira with her husband.

We praise the hooves that kicked Heliodorus.

And with infamy [the name of] Polymnester, who killed Polydorus,

“Goes around the circle of this mountain.

At last we cry out, ‘Crassus, tell us,

Since you know, what’s the flavor of gold?’

“Sometimes one of us speaks loudly and another, softly,

All based on the affection that spurs us on, now

To bigger steps, now to smaller steps.

“In this way, I was praising the good, the way it always happens during the day.

And I was not alone, although no other person

Close by was raising his voice.”