PURGATORIO, Episode 217. Of Brooks, Solitady Ladies, and Layered Meanings: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, Lines 22 - 42

Our pilgrim continues walking through the old-growth forest, so dark that very little light can get into its cooling shade.

He is eventually blocked by two seemingly small things: a little brook flowing to the left and a solitary lady across the way, singing and picking flowers.

But the poet Dante gives us hints that all is already not what it seems. Meaning is getting layered over the naturalist details our pilgrim innocently notices.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:07] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 22 - 42. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me by dropping a comment about this episode, please scroll down this page.

[03:03] A glance back to the start of the canto . . . and a glance back to the start of INFERNO.

[05:59] More repeated words in the poetry.

[07:31] Naturalistic details and the initial layering of metaphysical, moral, or allegorical meaning.

[16:30] No geographical understanding of this place (yet) . . . but a literary understanding of it: pastoral poetry.

[22:48] The unnamed, solitary lady as an interpretive trap.

[24:57] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 22 - 42.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 22 – 42:

Already my slow steps had taken me

So deep into the old-growth forest that I

Couldn’t glance back to where I’d entered.

And behold! A stream denied my going any farther.

It flowed toward the left with little waves

That bent the grasses growing along its banks.

All the purest waters of the world would seem

To be murky when compared

To this stream, which conceals nothing,

Even though it moves along darkly, darkly

Under that perpetual shade that never lets

The sun or the moon beam through.

Although my feet stood still, my eyes passed

Beyond that brook there to admire

The great diversity of the fresh May branches.

And over there I seemed to see—as sometimes something

Will suddenly come along that disperses

Every other thought out of sheer wonder—

A solitary lady, strolling along,

Singing and picking flower after flower

Among those that tinted her path.