Cato returns! He seems awfully mad. But at what? And at whom? These are harder questions that we might imagine. Dante the pilgrim certainly didn’t expect his return. Cato apparently didn’t either. And maybe the poet Dante didn’t expect it as well. So many interpretations, so many quandaries at the end of PURGATORIO, Canto II.

Dante wants something from Casella. He wants refreshment, relief. And he gets it in the form of his own poetry that Casella sings back to our pilgrim. He also may be partaking in a much older version of Purgatory as the “refrigerium,” as well as the historical nodes of Pope Boniface VIII’s Jubilee Year of 1300.

Dante hears some wild news from Casella on the shores of Purgatory: Ghosts can wander around the land of the living, souls can refuse an angel’s summons, and the pope’s plenary indulgences may not be as effective as the pontiff thinks they are. PURGATORIO gets weirder by the moment. No wonder it’s the heart of Dante’s COMEDY.

Dante the pilgrim moves to hug one of the souls who’ve stepped off the angel’s boat. But Dante’s arms go right through the fellow, despite their obvious bond of affection. The body-soul problem is intensifying in PURGATORIO. How? And why? Dante the poet is not satisfied with his corporeal souls so far. So he’s starting to change the game.

Dante and Virgil encounter the souls who’ve been summarily dumped onto the shores of Purgatory from the angel’s boat. Nobody seems to know what to do. Is hesitancy the right first step toward a new life? And is hesitancy part of this new work Virgil uses: “pilgrims”? Maybe the theology of wonder requires hesitancy as its grounding in Dante’s PURGATORIO, the second third of COMEDY.

The souls arrive on the shores of Purgatory singing a psalm all about the exodus experience. But more than that, this psalm is a unique example of chant musicality in Dante’s day, a possible comment on the road ahead for us as we trace our route through PURGATORIO with Virgil and Dante the pilgrim.

Virgil spots the first angel, he makes Dante the pilgrim bend the knee, and Dante also drops his eyes at the incredible brightness. A seemingly redemptive passage that is yet packed with references to characters from INFERNO. And what of Virgil? His position in Purgatory (and in PURGATORIO!) appears ever more complicated.

Dante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, may not know what to do as the sun rises and turns the sky orange. But an answer may be approaching Purgatory very quickly as something incredibly white is sailing straight toward them, revealing both the poet’s and the pilgrim’s disingenuous stance.

The sunrises on a gorgeous landscape. The zodiac even appears to be alive. Dante the pilgrim is all cleaned up. Too bad he has no idea what to do next. Worse yet, Virgil’s apparently of no use, either. An interesting start to Canto II of PURGATORIO.

In this interpolated episode of our podcast about Dante’s masterwork, COMEDY, I’d like to begin a discussion of what Purgatory is: how did it come to be, how does Dante understand its theology, and what part does he play in the development of the doctrine.

Dante and Virgil wander around after Cato’s disappearance, despite being told explicitly what to do. The end of PURGATORIO, Canto I, shows us the complex emotional landscape Dante the poet is building in this second third of COMEDY. You can be lost and found at the same time.

Cato offers his reply to Virgil at the beginning of PURGATORIO: Your flattery won’t save you, but your story will. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this crucial passage to understanding the road ahead in the second third of Dante’s masterwork, COMEDY. Stay pliant, because the poem has got big waves ahead.

Cato is the gatekeeper of Purgatory. Does that mean he’s redeemed? And if he is, what does that do to the poem. What’s more, Marcia, Cato’s wife, is praying for him in Limbo. Can she? Or does Virgil not know what prayer is? Questions abound as we explore this mind-boggling passage a second time from Canto I of PURGATORIO, the second third of Dante’s COMEDY.

Virgil answers the lone old man with the first long speech of PURGATORIO. But that speech opens up so many questions. How does Virgil know who this old man is? How does Virgil know there are seven realms of Purgatory? Why does Virgil make Dante the pilgrim show such abject obeisance, more so than he will show to many of the saints in Paradise? Is Virgil still a reliable guide?

In the opening canto of PURGATORIO, Dante the pilgrim turns from the wonder of the stars to something even more astounding: a lone, old man standing next to him. The pilgrim doesn’t seem shocked. But we certainly will be. This lone old man will disrupt COMEDY, unsettle its readers, and change the laws of the afterlife. Quite a lot a solitary figure under a gorgeous predawn sky.

In the opening lines of PURGATORIO, we turn from the Dante the poet to Dante the pilgrim—and specifically to his wonder at the predawn sky and the regeneration it begins in him. But we also encounter some tough interpretive questions right up front: Who are the “first people” and what are these four stars the pilgrim sees? All in all, this passage moves from laughter to loss, the poles of the human experience.

Dante opens PURGATORIO with himself, with the poet, rather than with the pilgrim, his fictional alter ego (who gets the opening bits of INFERNO). Dante expresses his Christian hopes as well as his potentially heterodox theology on the human will. And he offers us a glimpse of both his hubris and his doubts with his third invocation to the muses in COMEDY.

We’ve begun our exploration of Dante’s mountain of Purgatory. A mountain in more than one way! As we stand on the shores, we’ll read the first two cantos in my English translation, then I’ll raise six initial, interpretive questions that we can answer over the course of breaking these cantos into smaller sections.

An introduction to PURGATORIO—not so much to the second portion of Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY; more, an introduction to how we’re going to climb this beast of a mountain. Also, the five ways I initially read (that is, interpret) PURGATORIO—although I’ll bet they’ll change during our climb.

We’ve concluded our slow-walk across hell, the first third (or so) of Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY. But there are many more ways you can deepen your understanding of INFERNO. Here are some suggestions for ways to come to terms with the poem beyond this podcast—all as we get ready to ascend Mount Purgatory.