PURGATORIO is the hinge between INFERNO and PARADISO in Dante’s COMEDY. Here are nine final thoughts after our slow climb up the mountain to help us bring the second canticle to a close: overview points, literary notations, and speculative quibbles.
Read MoreThe poet, Dante, steps out seven times from the story of PURGATORIO to address his reader directly. Over the course of these call-outs, can we trace a developmental pattern? Can we see a changing attitude toward the poet’s own work? Is he expressing his fears or frustrations of the daunting task ahead in PARADISO?
Read MoreOver the course of INFERNO and PURGATORIO, Dante develops, changes, hedges, and clarifies his theories of his own craft: why and how he is writing COMEDY. These nine passages lead us to consider the way the poet modifies his own stance toward his work and help us see how an artist thinks through the complicated processes of creation.
Read MorePURGATORIO concludes with threats to COMEDY as a whole, with further mysteries about Matelda’s character, with a final address to the reader about the bridle of the poem, and with four hopeful notes as the pilgrim Dante is ready to ascend to the stars.
Read MoreThe procession continues through Eden and away from Lethe until it’s stopped by a dark, frigid place, even in this spot of primal innocence. It’s also stopped for us the readers because the fair lady tending the garden finally gets a name: Matelda. Who is she? Why has she been so hard to interpret for seven hundred years?
Read MoreAfter Beatrice’s final discourse in PURGATORIO, Dante admits he has images stamped on his brain from what he’s seen and heard although he doesn’t understand much of what she means. Beatrice then launches into a condemnation of whatever school Dante has followed, before making a promise for greater clarity ahead.
Read MoreThe conclusion of Beatrice’s monologue at the end of PURGATORIO: fun calculations about Limbo, badly mixed metaphors, theories of writing and reading, as well as the reshaping of this journey across the known universe from a standard pilgrimage to a crusade.
Read MoreBeatrice continues her discourse in canto XXXIII at the top of Mount Purgatory by offering Dante both a job (to be her scribe) and a theory of his own craft (take notes, then wait to write). Along the way, Dante himself makes a rare mistake, a misquote from Ovid that lasted centuries in commentary before it was corrected.
Read MoreAfter some banter over the mannerly way to converse with Beatrice, she sets into the final discourse of PURGATORIO: her cryptic and apocalyptic discussion of the chariot, the times, and the coming of “five hundred ten and five, God’s messenger.” Her discourse is meant to prepare us for the elliptical and stylized language of PARADISO, just ahead of us.
Read MoreAfter the apocalyptic vision of Canto XXXII, after the giant has dragged the chariot and the whore into the woods of Eden, Beatrice and the seven ladies exchange Latin quotations from the Bible, then Beatrice turns to Dante and accepts him as her walking companion in the terrestrial Paradise.
Read MoreThe second episode on the apocalyptic vision that ends PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII. In this episode, we’ll go over the now-standard reading, popularized by the rationalist, Anglo-American readers of COMEDY. We’ll talk about cracks and rifts in that interpretation. And we’ll discuss ways the vision itself may finally be “uninterpretable.”
Read MoreDante has a vision of the catastrophic end of the grand chariot and perhaps even one of the original trees of Eden, all while standing to the side on the grassy margin with Statius and perhaps the young woman guardian of Eden nearby. This vision is complex and demands that its readers come into the interpretive space to make meaning.
Read MoreIn this interpolated episode for WALKING WITH DANTE, let’s talk (all too briefly) about the roles, restrictions, opportunities, and places for women in Dante’s day, the High Middle Ages. How could women advance their own concerns in an increasingly restrictive culture? And how does the contradictions affect Dante’s masterwork, COMEDY.
Read MoreDante wakes up from his quick nap to a panic that Beatrice has left with the griffin and the parade of revelation. Instead, the young woman of Eden shows him Beatrice’s new position: seated on the roots under the renewed tree. In this passage just before the grand apocalyptic vision, Dante de-centers his readers and forces them into complex games of meaning.
Read MoreThe griffin pulls the chariot (or cart) up to the denuded tree in the Garden of Eden. As the pole gets attached to the tree, the tree itself regenerates . . . and our pilgrim, Dante, falls asleep. The mysteries deepen in this passage before the final apocalyptic vision of PURGATORIO, giving the reader a clue into the complexities that lie just ahead.
Read MoreThe griffin, its chariot (or cart), and Beatrice arrive with Dante, Statius, and the beautiful lady at the foot of a denuded tree, bare branches with no fruit available. The allegories and symbolism become thicker and more complex at every step. Which tree in Eden? Why does Beatrice descend? What does the griffin mean by his one and only line in COMEDY?
Read MoreFace to face with Beatrice, the pilgrim Dante either thinks he’s ready for more revelation or is still caught in his old physical attraction for his beloved ten years after her death. But how can Dante be in the wrong after Lethe? And why does the parade of revelation, the embodiment of the church militant, seem to be in retreat? And what does that griffin symbolize?
Read MoreRather than a passage by passage analysis of the final two cantos of PURGATORIO, sit back and enjoy a read-through of my loose translation of the climax of this second canticle in Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY. We come to the densest and most difficult passages yet in the poem. Let’s get ready for more analysis ahead.
Read MoreAt long last, Beatrice and Dante are face to face. We’ve anticipated this moment since INFERNO, Canto II, when Beatrice made her first appearance in COMEDY. They’re silent in this complicated scene as the women around the chariot urge them closer and press Beatrice to reveal her hidden beauty: her mouth.
Read MoreBeatrice and the griffin: they’re deeply connected, so much so that its true nature is only found in the reflection in her eyes. Yet both have a complex, even ambiguous symbolism that may make them both the allegories of more than one concept. They both are double-natured in their own ways.
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