PURGATORIO, Episode 244. Sound The Retreat In Eden: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 - 27

Face to face with Beatrice, the pilgrim Dante is ready for more revelation. Problem is, even after Lethe he's still doing things wrong and must be corrected by the women around the griffin's chariot.

But what is he doing wrong? And why does the entire parade of revelation go into retreat? What indeed does that griffin symbolize? And how did we get from the intensely personal experience of Dante's confession and contrition to this much more global view of the allegories on the march?

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:17] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 - 27. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me about this canto, scroll down this page.

[03:31] A brief introduction to PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII.

[05:19] Notes for the first nine lines (or three tercets) of the canto.

[10:40] Dante's forgotten failings and Beatrice's on-going attraction.

[12:04] Dante's intense gaze . . . but for or at what?

[16:23] Beatrice and the problem of the "lesser thing" of revelation.

[21:28] The parade of revelation (or of the church militant) in retreat with its "precious cargo."

[25:01] The griffin's feathers, which prompt further questions about the griffin's allegorical meaning.

[28:08] Bridging the personal and the universal.

[31:04] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, lines 1- 27.

My English translation of PURGATORIO Purgatorio, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 – 27:

My eyes were so intensely focused and expectant

To quench their ten-year thirst

That all my other senses had run out of energy.

First on this side, then on the other, [my eyes]

Had put up walls out of indifference. How her holy smile

Pulled [my eyes] to itself with its ancient net!

That’s when those goddesses forcibly turned

My face to the left—

Because I heard them say, “Too intensely!”

And the condition that affects the eyes

When they’re struck by the sun

Left me without [the power of] sight for a bit.

But then when my sight was reconditioned to the lesser thing—

And I say “to the lesser thing” with respect to the sheer abundance

Of sensations from which I’d been forcibly removed—

I saw that the glorious army had turned

To its right. It was going back

With the sun and the seven flames out front.

As a battle line, to save itself, turns around under its shields

And has to loop back with its standards as well,

All this before it can change its direction,

So those warriors of the heavenly kingdom

Who had been out in front passed by us

Before the chariot could bend its first pole.

Then the ladies came back to its wheels

And the griffin pulled his precious cargo

So that none of his feathers was shaken loose.