PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, opens with six of the most beautiful lines in all of Dante’s COMEDY: full of yearning, sadness, death, sunset, sunrise, hope, and human emotion. It continues on to explore the yearning through the third hymn or antiphon of Purgatory, then moves to see the stars wheeling above—that is, the spheres we’re walking toward.
Read MoreWe’ve already glossed this long, difficult passage about the darkening vale of the negligent rulers in the last episode of WALKING WITH DANTE. In this episode, I ask ten interpretive questions of the passage: some with answers, some with tentative answers, and some with mere speculation as an answer. Dante is showing us his increasingly intellectual side. Let’s figure out what he’s up to.
Read MoreSordello runs through the roster of kings and rulers in the beautiful vale on the lower slopes of Mount Purgatory. They’re lamenting their very actionable lives. And in running the list, Sordello is giving someone (Virgil? Dante? the reader?) a crash course in the politics of central and southern Europe from the mid to the late 1200s.
Read MoreSordello, Virgil, and Dante the pilgrim walk on an easy path to the rim of a beautiful dale that will hold the valley of the kings. But along the way, Dante the poet, a master of terror, must figure out how to begin to write about beauty. And he must once again renegotiate his position toward Virgil’s masterpiece, THE AENEID.
Read MoreSordello tells Virgil they have to find a place to settle in for the night because sunset will mean they can’t move up anymore. The allegory is intense: the will, light, darkness, stasis, and descent. Maybe you should will yourself to stand still when you don’t have any light, rather than moving backwards and away from your goal.
Read MoreOn the slopes before the official gate of Purgatory, the poet Sordello doesn’t seem to be bothered by the eternal state of Virgil’s soul. Instead, he wants to know how the damned Virgil got to Purgatory. So Virgil offers a story that reiterates what we know about Limbo, redefines Limbo again, and leaves the pilgrim Dante out of this journey across the known universe.
Read MoreAfter Sordello and Virgil embrace, Dante the poet appears to want to return Virgil to the center of the narrative stage in his walk across the known universe. But can he? How does he renegotiate the damned Virgil’s presence in the sections of COMEDY devoted to the redeemed? And what of Cato, always lurking the theology’s narrative background?
Read MoreDante’s invective against political strife comes to an end in PURGATORIO, Canto VI, with two familiar moves: a reference back to the poet’s own experience (never letting the poem get too far from his body) and to an image that brilliantly sums up Florentine strife while also perhaps offering a glimpse of the poet’s dawning, new stance.
Read MoreDante the poet has finally lost control! In the middle of his invective about Italian strife in PURGATORIO, Canto VI, he seems to question God’s counsel, to limit God’s power to that of a human body, and to turn the Christian God into a pagan entity. What is going on in this most complex passage in PURGATORIO?
Read MoreThe split between Dante the pilgrim and Dante the poet that we make in COMEDY is a convenient fiction that helps us come to terms with a polyvalent, multivocal, multitemporal, and ultimately ironic work of literature.
Read MoreThe story of Dante’s walk across his known universe breaks in PURGATORIO, Canto VI, right after Virgil and Sordello embrace. The rest of the canto is dedicated to the poet’s rage at the constant warfare on the Italian peninsula and his hope for an iron fist to set things right. Along the way, many of us have to confront our expectations that COMEDY may not be the poem we want it to be.
Read MoreDante and Virgil encounter the second guide across the known universe: Sordello, a late troubadour poet from Italy who is deeply connected to characters across COMEDY and who practiced a sort of poetry that Dante himself wrote earlier in his career. Sordello is isolated and alone, a strange figure in this broken-in-half sixth canto of PURGATORIO.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and Virgil walk on from the pressing crowd of those who died violent deaths. And now it’s the pilgrim’s turn to press Virgil. He quizzes the old poet on the theology of a passage in THE AENEID. And the answer Virgil gives is one for the ages: utter gibberish.
Read MoreSix souls who’ve died violent deaths accost Dante the pilgrim on the lower slopes of Mount Purgatory. They all want him to take back news of them, so the living will pray for their ascent. It’s a complicated game of cat and mouse when it comes to their identities. But there’s another game being played, one much closer to Dante’s heart. And it has a real loser: Virgil!
Read MoreReading Purgatorio, Cantos VI - VIII in my English translation. These are three tough cantos before we arrives at the gate of Purgatory proper. Before we break them down into smaller chunks to study them, let’s read them straight through to discover the issues Virgil, Dante, and the reader face as the journey becomes increasingly difficult.
Read MoreThe third speech in PURGATORIO, Canto V, has given rise to more criticism per line that almost any other moment in COMEDY. Pia comes forward to give her short, enigmatic, elliptical tale, her violent death which must be inferred from her speech. What can we make of its poetics? What is Dante the poet trying to do with this tragic woman who speaks just a few lines after the first moment of the true veneration of Mary in COMEDY?
Read MoreThe second soul who died violently steps forward to speak in PURGATORIO, Canto V. This time, it’s Buonconte da Montefeltro, one of Dante’s enemies from the battle of Campeldino. He tells a tale that reverses his father’s tale from INFERNO. And Dante the poet is perhaps correcting “errors” from INFERNO throughout the early cantos of PURGATORIO.
Read MoreThe rush of unison souls on the first minor ledge of PURGATORIO becomes quiet as one soul steps forward to tell the tale of his death to Dante the poet and Virgil, his guide. This soul’s story begins with a small reprimand and continue through the facts of his death to a beautiful, poetic line. Along the way, we may have a glimpse of what Dante the poet is up to in Ante-Purgatory and the changing poetics of PURGATORIO.
Read MoreAfter the lazy souls with Belacqua in the shade, Dante and Virgil come across a group that seems in a frenzied: running, shouting, galloping, calling out, speaking in one voice. They’re a marked contrast to the new motivation Dante the pilgrim gives for his journey: peace.
Read MoreDante and Virgil pass beyond Belacqua’s lazy cohorts and find themselves among some very industrious souls who are also eager to know how the pilgrim Dante is still in his body. This time, Virgil’s reply is completely different. What’s going on? What accounts for the change in Virgil?
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