PURGATORIO, Episode 254. In Which Pilgrimage Becomes Crusade: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXIII, Lines 61 - 78

Beatrice concludes her monologue at the end of PURGATORIO with some dazzling metaphoric pyrotechnics, a slam on Dante's intellect, and a redefinition of this journey across the known universe. It's not just any old pilgrimage. It's a crusade.

Let’s look at the final images of her speech and discover its larger, structural details . . . which point us directly ahead to PARADISO.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:11] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXIII, Lines 61 - 78. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation about this episode, scroll down this page.

[03:03] Fun calculations to discover how long Adam (and Eve) stayed in Limbo.

[07:52] Beatrice's assertions about the writing and reading of texts.

[13:33] References to the river Elsa and to Pyramus.

[17:10] A badly mixed metaphor that leads into questions of interiority.

[21:14] Rereading all of Beatrice's final monologue in PURGATORIO: XXXIII: 31 - 78.

[23:49] Four structural notes on this monologue.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXIII, Lines 61 – 78:

“Because the first soul bit into it, he

Yearned for five thousand years in punishment and desire

For the one who punished that bite in himself.

“Your wit is asleep if it doesn’t judge

That a singular cause made the tree grow so tall

And become inverted at the top.

“And if your vain thoughts had not been like

The water of Elsa surrounding your mind,

And their pleasure like Pyramus at his mulberry,

“Through so many circumstances on their own

You would have known the tree to exhibit, in the moral sense,

The justice of God in its prohibition.

“But because I see that your intellect has morphed

Into stone and, petrified, tinted

The light of what I say so that it dazzles you,

“I wish as well that you carry it back inside you—

If not written, at least depicted—in the same way

That a pilgrim carries back a palm-ringed staff.”