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.
Read MoreAs the zealous slothful run on, two more come in the rear, biting the penitents with warnings about sloth. After they’re gone, the pilgrim can finally get some rest. He has a new thought—curiously undefined—which leads him into his second dream in PURGATORIO.
Read MoreAt last, the slothful penitents arrive . . . in a frenzied rush. The horde passes by the pilgrim and Virgil as one soul calls out his story. It speaks a brave truth about the family of a very powerful warlord . . . in fact, the very warlord who has hosted and guarded Dante on the run for years.
Read MoreVirgil has finished his reasoned discourses on love. The pilgrim and he still stand at the cusp of the fourth terrace of Purgatory. Night is coming on and the pilgrim is losing the will to climb on. But don’t go to sleep just yet. You may get run over by the Bacchic frenzy of the slothful.
Read MoreVirgil offers a third discourse on love to show his work and to get close to an understanding of ethics. In doing so, he reaches into Aristotle’s logic of causality and attempts to come to terms with why humans behave they do. But even as he reaches back, he looks forward to our modern understanding of ethics.
Read MoreVirgil has finished his second discourse on love, showing the syllogistic work behind his first discourse. But Virgil must not be too good at rhetoric, because the pilgrim Dante has yet more questions, including one that is fundamental to any religious thinking.
Read MoreAfter the pilgrim’s request that Virgil show his work, the old poet condenses and recasts the basis of thinking in Western culture from its roots in Aristotle. But Virgil’s claims run into specific problems, which Dante the poet tries to solve in the way he knows best: with metaphor.
Read MoreVirgil 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 MoreA (sort of?) short summary of PURGATORIO, Cantos I through XVII. To see the imaginative sweep. To remember where we’ve been. And to set us up for the questions ahead, both in the remainder of PURGATORIO and indeed on into PARADISO.
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 MoreVirgil opens the central discourse of Dante’s COMEDY with his thesis on love: it’s the seed of all human action, good or bad. He then parses that thesis with scholastic reasoning, only to repeat the claim and come to rest at the conclusion. You’re in heaven or hell because of love!
Read MoreDante runs out of steam just as he crests the stair at the cusp of the fourth terrace of Purgatory proper. The sun is setting, the moon is rising, and we know he can’t climb anymore. But he still wants to know where he is and what’s going on. So he turns to the damned Virgil, ever the shocking guide to this part of the afterlife.
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 the poet is playing with light: physical/metaphysical, revelatory/imaginary, sunrise/sunset, illuminating/concealing, angelic/cosmic. All this as COMEDY finds its center and PURGATORIO itself divides on a beautiful moment with the stars.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim has three more ecstatic visions as he gets ready to depart Purgatory's terrace of the angry. These visions are all about the destructive nature of excessive wrath and may give us an indication about why anger sits at the center of COMEDY: to mitigate Dante's own anger at Florence.
Read MoreDante walks into the light of the setting sun, leaving behind the smoke of the angry on Mount Purgatory's third terrace. Or is that their fog and mist? Or their clouds? Metaphoric space overlays metaphoric space as Dante begins to argue that the imagination is a mechanism of revelation.
Read MoreMarco of Lombardy's central discourse in COMEDY raises as many questions as it answers. What is Dante the poet up to with this long speech at the center of the poem. Let's read through the speech in its entirety, then ask six central questions that it raises without definite answers.
Read MoreThe angry penitent Marco of Lombardy's time in COMEDY comes to a conclusion with a chatty back-and-forth with the pilgrim Dante. Dante wants to compliment Marco on a great argument (the very one that Dante the poet crafted!). But Marco comes back with his irritation and abruptly leaves the scene.
Read MoreThe angry penitent Marco of Lombardy continues his diagnosis of the world's ills. It should have two suns. It's got only one. And a sun that's not kosher. Or that perhaps cannot be kosher. So is the fault in us, as he claimed? Or is the corruption of the world a systemic problem?
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