Virgil seems to have reached a conclusion to his discourse on love in PURGATORIO, Canto XVII. But not for the pilgrim. And maybe not for Dante the poet. As Canto XVIII opens, we find the pilgrim asking Virgil to show his work to explain his seemingly air-tight syllogisms about human ethics.
Read MoreVirgil concludes his central discourse on love—the center of both PURGATORIO and indeed COMEDY as a whole—on a strangely ambiguous note. After so much certainty about how humans act and why the afterlife is set up as it is, he ends by saying, “I just don’t know”—a wildly discordant note amid so much “truth.”
Read MoreVirgil continues his discourse on love, the central discourse in Dante’s COMEDY. Virgil explains love as the basis of human behavior, using reasoning from both Aquinas and Aristotle. His understanding of ethics forms the basis of Purgatory itself and perfectly fits Dante’s ultimate vision that desire drives us to God.
Read MoreDante and Virgil have reached the fourth terrace of Purgatory proper, the spot where the slothful race around to purge their sin. But before we see the runners, Virgil treats the pilgrim (and us) to the central discourse of COMEDY: all human actions are rooted in love. Here’s a read-through of PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, Line 73, to Canto XVIII, Line 145.
Read MoreDante has heard Virgil’s explanation of the good becoming more, the more it’s shared (at least in heaven); yet Dante is not satisfied. So the pilgrim goes back for a second helping in this passage that continues Virgil’s lesson, turning the “good” into love and light, a move that will set us up for the grand revelations in the central cantos of COMEDY.
Read MoreDante and Virgil make great haste along the empty second terrace of PURGATORIO but are soon accosted by three disembodied voices, whipping them on to love but also offering a node of the alienation that will pervade this terrace . . . and that is crucial as a separating space between Dante the poet and his master, Virgil.
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