PURGATORIO, Episode 238. Absence Becomes Elevated, High-Style Presence: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, Lines 49 - 63

Beatrice continues to lead Dante toward contrition, pointing out both the purposes of her body (or corpse) and the ways he has failed to followed her lofty beauty.

She finishes her second salvo at the pilgrim with a rhetorical flourish, showing the reader (and Dante) that she is a master of rhetoric, someone who commands a high, elevated style of poetry--that is, a fusion of the literal and the metaphoric that will become increasingly necessary to describe the PARADISO experience. She is directing both the pilgrim and his poetry.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:09] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, Lines 49 - 63. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[03:19] Glossing the full passage: "beauty" three times, high rhetorical style, low vulgar vocabulary, and an aphoristic ending.

[13:15] Rereading Beatrice's second salvo at Dante: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, lines 22 - 63.

[15:22] The uneasy but crucial balance between allegorical/metaphorical language and literal/realistic language.

[18:57] Beatrice: negative space made flesh.

[23:38] Renegotiating COMEDY v. intending these revelations all along.

[28:06] High rhetorical style in Dante's vernacular mouth.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXI, Lines 49 – 63

“Never did nature or art present to you

Such beauty as the lovely members

In which I was enclosed. And they’re scattered in the dirt.

“And if the highest beauty so failed you

Because of my death, what mortal thing

Should have then drawn you to desire it?

“After the first arrow of deceitful things,

You truly should have risen up

To follow me, for I was no longer such [as I’d been].

“Your wings should not have sagged

[So you could] await more guilt, whether because of a young girl

Or some other novelty whose use is so brief.

“A young bird waits for two or three tries;

But in front the eyes [of a bird] that’s fully fledged,

Nets are spread and arrows shot for no good reason.”