PURGATORIO, Episode 220. The Breeze Of The Poem's Faith: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, Lines 85 - 108

The lady in Eden says she's come to answer the pilgrim's questions. And he's got one. It just might not be the first question on our minds.

But it's one that reveals the hall of mirrors that the poet has created in COMEDY, in which the poem itself justifies its own fictional if scientific answers to questions that lead the fictional pilgrim (and the very real reader) to a position of faith, based on the imagined landscape.

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:27] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 85 - 108. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:06] The lady's six-line theological explanation for the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind.

[07:31] The lady's six-line scientific explanation for the breeze on the top of Mount Purgatory.

[11:04] The lady's six-line glimpse of Paradise above.

[12:54] The pilgrim's question of faith is built off the fictional landscape and its "scientific" answers found in the poem itself.

[21:39] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, lines 85 - 108.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII, Lines 85 – 108:

I said, “The water and the sound of the forest

Are at war in me with a new faith—

Because of what I heard contrary to all this.”

So she [said], “I will tell you how what makes you

Marvel proceeds from its own cause

And I will expunge the fog that strikes you.

“The supreme Good, whose being alone pleases himself,

Made man both [to be] good and for the good—and this place

He gave as a pledge to him of eternal peace.

“Because of his own fault, he lived here only a little while.

Because of his own fault, he exchanged his honorable laughter

And sweet play for weeping and labor.

“In order that the turbulence made down below

By the exhalations of water and earth—

These follow heat as well as they are able—

“Should not make war on man,

This mountain rose all this way toward heaven

And is free from them above the gate that’s locked.

“Now because the air in all cases

Turns in a circle that’s based on its first turning,

If its circling is not stopped in some place,

“This height, which rises altogether undisturbed

In the living air, feels that movement.

That’s what makes the forest resound because it’s so thick. . . .”