Bonagiunta, a poet from the previous generation and one of the gluttons pointed out by Forese Donati on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory, offers the pilgrim an opaque prophecy and then wonders if this pilgrim is the same guy who wrote a long poem in the VITA NUOVA. The pilgrim replies that he is that poet . . . and then goes onto make a wild claim about poetic inspiration.
Read MoreForese Donati continues his conversation with Dante the pilgrim by pointing out five of the penitent gluttons who surround them and by using culinary and gastronomical imagery to reinforce both the thematics and the irony of this terrace (and perhaps to add fuel to the fire of the rivalry between French and Italian cuisine).
Read MoreForese Donati and our pilgrim Dante continue their conversation from Canto XXIII of PURGATORIO on the terrace of the gluttons. We are met with three curiosities: Virgil’s on-going silence, Statius’s apparently very strong will (that can even slow down his ultimate desire), and our first glimpse of Paradise, a classical glimpse of Forese’s sister, Piccarda.
Read MoreForese Donati has finished his screed against Florentine women and is ready to hear how the pilgrim Dante got so far up Mount Purgatory while still in the flesh. Dante obliges and also renegotiates the terms of the opening and even the plot of COMEDY as we near the climax of the second canticle, of PURGATORIO.
Read MoreForese Donati launches into his screed against Florentine women by reaffirming his love for his wife, Nella. He vaults into the high style of a prophetic voice, referencing prophecies from Isaiah, all while using the vernacular Florentine to offer a lyrical subtext to his stern (and ultimately false) condemnation.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and his rival/friend/fellow poet Forese Donati go on talking about suffering and the nature of the ascent up the mountain. In doing so, they must speak about Forese’s wife, Nella. Dante has previously insulted her in the sonnet rivalry. Now, she’s a heroic figure who nonetheless brings us back to the problem of stating the higher truths in the vernacular.
Read MoreDante and Forese, friends and poetic rivals, continue their conversation on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory among the emaciated, skeletal gluttons. Forese’s suffering is clear and present, which makes them both pause on the central crux of being human: how to interpret the pain we feel.
Read MoreDante the poet muddies his text with increasingly opaque literary references until finally the pilgrim encounters a fellow, contemporary vernacular poet, not someone associated with the high style, but instead Forese Donati, a guy known for his vulgar, funny, hip, and insulting sonnets.
Read MoreOur pilgrim is still marveling at the mystical tree on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory—he has to be goaded on by Virgil, his “more than father.” As they walk along the terrace, they’re soon overtaken by skeletal, cadaverous penitents who find that the pilgrim himself is a source of marvel.
Read MoreDid Dante think the characters in classical poems like those by Virgil, Statius, and Ovid were real, historical people? The answer lies at the heart of our problem of reading Dante across the scientific-revolution divide. He may find texts more reliable than we do . . . and may find meaning less stable than we do.
Read MoreStatius and Virgil head out across the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. They’re stopped by an upside-down tree in the path. A voice in the tree warns them off, then admonishes them with examples of those who were moderate in their appetites . . . and the wonders of the classical age.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, arrives on the sixth, empty terrace of Mount Purgatory without a lot of fanfare. Instead, Statius and Virgil go ahead of him and talk about the craft of poetry. The passage is caught in the essential structural issue (and thematic one, too!) of COMEDY: circularity and linearity, fused into one state of being.
Read MoreVirgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. The sighs from that first circle of hell are transferred from the damned to the poet Dante (and to his reader). And the entire catalogue of the lost comes down to a final irony: Manto, lost in Dante’s own poem, misplaced and reassigned, a final misreading and misquotation in a canto full of them.
Read MoreVirgil finally gets to hear the story of Statius’s conversion. But for Statius to tell it, Dante the poet must make some concessions to the historical record, must account for the fact that Statius’s epic is dedicated to a Roman emperor, and must offer a compelling narrative vision . . . that devolves into the text as text, rather than as story.
Read MoreVirgil wants to know how Statius could have become a Christian since there’s no evidence of faith in his poetry about Thebes. Statius replies that it’s through Virgil’s poetry that he both became a poet and became a Christian. Damned Virgil lights the path to redemption.
Read MoreAn interpolated episode about Dante and irony: what it is, what are its literary forms, and how does Dante use irony in his own text to create the depths of meaning we find in COMEDY. Simple v. situational irony. Then dramatic, cosmic, and creative irony, all techniques our poet uses.
Read MoreStatius answers Virgil’s question: He wasn’t guilty of avarice, as Virgil imagined. Statius spent all his money. And he learned the error of his ways when he interpreted a passage from Virgil’s AENEID . . . or rather, when he misquoted and misinterpreted the passage. We have to come to the quagmire of interpretation—and Dante’s hope for classical texts.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim begins his climb to the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory blinded and behind his two guides, Virgil and Statius. The drama of the pilgrim’s blindness is superseded by Virgil’s curiosity about Statius . . . complete with Virgil’s own misquotation of Francesca from INFERNO, Canto V.
Read MoreA read-through of Purgatorio, Cantos XXII, XXIII, and XXIV. A rough translation before we break it into smaller parts for deeper analysis. The ascent from the fifth terrace of avarice (and we learn, another sin) to the sixth terrace of gluttony: an arboretum with hollow, wasted souls purging their love of wine and food.
Read MoreIn a very human and funny scene, Dante the pilgrim is caught between two poetic mentors, Statius and Virgil. It’s a battle of the wills . . . inside of Dante, who is finding that his emotions are more fundamental even than his will, all in a canto that is a hymn to the human will and that ends in the same spot another canto ended.
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