PURGATORIO, Episode 167. The (Maybe?) Supremacy Of The Will: PURGATORIO, Canto XXI, Lines 58 - 75

The still-unknown shade answers Virgil’s questions with an explosive claim: The souls on Mount Purgatory stand up and declare their own purity. Their will is its only proof. But this is an easy passage to misread (or just overstate) in the modern world. There are at least two safeguards the soul’s answer.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 166. The Place Beyond Accidental Change: PURGATORIO, Canto XXI, Lines 40 - 57

The unknown shade on the fifth terrace of Mount Purgatory begins to answer Virgil’s questions by referring to Aristotelian notions of change . . . and then begins wrapping the imagery and poetry of Cantos XX and XXI back onto themselves for a gorgeous lyrical tapestry amid the classical learning.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 165. Virgil's Classical Schooling And Insistence: PURGATORIO, Canto XXI, Lines 22 - 39

The unknown shades wants to know how two escapees from hell have made their way up Mount Purgatory. Virgil has to explain that the pilgrim Dante is still alive . . . and he does so with a knot of classical imagery before pressing on to the question of “why” the mountain just shook and all the souls shouted in one voice.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 164. A Shade Appears: PURGATORIO, Canto XXI, Lines 1 - 21

Dante the pilgrim is left wondering why Mount Purgatory has shaken so hard . . . and then he’s confronted by an even deeper mystery: a shade appears, seemingly out of nowhere, reminiscent of the appearances of Virgil and Cato earlier in COMEDY. It’s a wild start to one of the finest cantos in COMEDY.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 147. Greedy Beasts That Refuse The Lure: A Read-Through Of The Fifth Terrace Of PURGATORIO, Cantos XIX - XXI

The fifth terrace of Purgatory: a read-through of PURGATORIO, Cantos XIX, XX, and XXI. The terrace of the avaricious, which includes a late-to-repent pope, one of the founders of the French monarchy, and the Roman poet Statius who is so enamored with Virgil that he almost makes a grave mistake in the middle of Purgatory.

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