PURGATORIO, Episode 216. Our Pilgrim Let Loose (Again) In A Dark Wood: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, Lines 1 - 21

Our pilgrim has been set free--crowned and mitered, in fact--and can wander at will through the dense, thick wood that tops Mount Purgatory.

The opening lines of Canto XXVIII are fully from the pilgrim's point of view. They offer us a wealth of naturalistic detail that looks simple on first blush but that will get layered with sedimentary meaning over the next five and a half cantos.

This place is unprecedented in all of COMEDY. Let's see it for what it is, without delving into the exact answers to the questions of where we are. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for the opening lines of the third "chapter" of PURGATORIO.

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:17] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 1 - 21. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page..

[04:11] First detail: eagerness as the prime motivation.

[06:08] Second detail: first hints about the prominent poetics in the passage.

[08:42] Third detail: naturalistic imagery that isn't.

[11:04] Fourth detail: the beginnings of polyphony (and dissonance).

[13:09] Fifth detail: the pine forest at Classe.

[14:47] First nuanced point: wandering away and perhaps a resonance with Geryon.

[17:50] Second nuanced point: a Saharan wind in this verdant place (and perhaps an echo of Juno's storm that drives Aeneas into Dido's arms).

[20:31] First major interpretive node: constancy as the changed strategy for the poem.

[23:08] Second major interpretive node: the four verdant or forested landscapes of COMEDY before this one.

[31:57] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 1 - 21.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 1 – 21:

Already keen to explore within and all about

The divine forest, so dense and alive—

It shielded my eyes from the new day—

I left the embankment without further delay.

I took in the open country slowly, slowly,

Across the ground that breathed fragrances on every side.

Without any change in its own momentum,

A sweet breeze fanned my brow

With no greater harm than a gentle wind.

By it, the branches, trembling, were quickly bent—

All of them, in fact—toward the part of the holy mountain

Where it casts its first shade.

But from their straightened positions, the branches

Weren’t moved enough that the little birds

In those treetops left off practicing each its art.

Instead, with plentiful happiness they took in the first hours [of the day].

They sang among those leaves

Which themselves respire a low drone to [the birds’] rhymes.

[It was] like the note gathered from branch to branch

In the pine forest at the shore of Classe,

Whenever Aeolus lets the scirocco loose.