PURGATORIO, Episode 235. Finding The Fit For Your Talent: PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, Lines 127 - 145

Beatrice finishes her first indictment of Dante by showing him the fit subject matter for his abundant talent: her and the damned.

She accuses him of chasing after false images, then of discounting her own inspiration in dreams. She ends with her final hope: to descend to the doorway of the dead and get the pilgrim started across the known universe.

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:25] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, Lines 127 - 145. If you'd like to read along or continue the discussion with me, please scroll down this page.

[03:16] In praise of Beatrice's elevated rhetoric.

[05:20] The erotic tension between Beatrice and Dante.

[07:59] First callback in the passage: to either the Siren in PURGATORIO XIX or to the second woman in the VITA NUOVA.

[10:22] Second callback: to either Beatrice's eyes or her appearance in a dream toward the end of the VITA NUOVA.

[13:43] Third callback: to Limbo (and Virgil).

[15:37] Dante's search for the subject matter that will fit his talent.

[16:47] Four levels of interpretation for Beatrice's first indictment: literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical.

[21:31] When was Dante supposed to purse these failings on the mountain?

[23:27] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, lines 127 - 145.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, Lines 127 – 145:

[Beatrice continued:] “When I had elevated from flesh to spirit,

When beauty and power were strengthened in me,

I was less dear and less gratifying to him.

“So he turned his steps into a way that wasn’t true.

He followed false images of the good,

Which don’t fully hold to their promises.

“It also wasn’t worth my while to impart inspiration.

I tried to use it in dreams and other ways

To call him back. But they barely mattered to him!

“He’d fallen so far down

That the methods for saving him had already come up short—

Except to show him the lost people.

“For this, I visited the doorway of the dead

And my prayers, while I wept, were carried to

The one who got him up here.

“The high decree of God would be broken

If Lethe were passed and such nourishment

Were tasted without the kind of payment

Of repentance that manifests itself in [those] tears.”