PURGATORIO, Episode 247. Beatrice, Changed; Dante, Panicked; And The Reader, De-centered: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, Lines 70 - 108

Dante wakes back up from his unexpected sleep to find that the grand parade is heading off into the forest (or maybe the skies). He's in a panic that Beatrice has left, too, although the young woman of Eden comforts him and shows her now humble place under the renewed tree.

Meanwhile, we readers are equally panicked . . . or at least de-centered, as we try to make sense of complicated similes and oblique symbolic meanings. COMEDY is getting more complex by the line. It's a game of interpretation we've been preparing to play since INFERNO, Canto I.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:21] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, Lines 70 - 108. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, scroll down this page.

[04:53] Four (or maybe five) interwoven Biblical references in the opening twelve lines of this passage (or the opening four tercets).

[13:25] The interweaving of textuality to de-center the reader by pushing meaning further into mystery.

[15:52] Dante's awakening to panic and then obeisance.

[19:43] The complex meaning of Beatrice's changed position under the tree.

[25:10] Dante's Roman hopes for heaven.

[26:47] A flourish of the medieval high rhetorical style at the end of the passage.

[28:53] Writing as awakening and return.

[31:23] Rereading this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, lines 70 - 108.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXXII, Lines 70 – 108

So I’ll step forward to when I woke up

And I’ll say that a splendor ripped the veil

Of sleep. A call [did so, too]: “Get up! What are you doing?”

As when [someone] is taken to see the flowering buds of that apple tree

That makes the angels feel greedy for its fruit

While they hold perpetual wedding feasts in heaven,

Peter, John, and James, controlled and conquered,

Woke back up to the words

That had snapped deeper sleep than theirs

And saw that their school had been stripped

Of the likes of Moses and Elijah

And that their master had changed his garment,

So I awoke and saw that compassionate lady

Hovering over me, the same one who had before

Guided my steps along the river.

Full of doubt, I said, “Where’s Beatrice?”

At which she [said], “Look over there under [those] new leaves

[And] sitting on their roots.

“See the company that rings her.

All the others are going back up after the griffin

With a sweeter and more astute song.”

And if her speech went further than that,

I have no clue because my eyes were already on her

Who shut me out of seeing anything else.

She sat alone on the true earth,

As if [she’d been] left there as a guard for the wagon

That I’d seen tethered by the two-natured beast.

The seven nymphs closed her

In a circle with those lights in their hands

That are safe from Aquilon and Auster.

“Here, you’ll be a woodsman for a little while.

Then with me [and] without end, you’ll be a citizen

Of that Rome of which Christ is a Roman.

“Thus, for the good of the world that lives for evil,

Focus your eyes on the chariot now and whatever you see,

Be sure to write it down when you get back over there.”

So [said] Beatrice. And I, who was completely devoted

To the foot of her commandments,

Turned my mind and my eyes to where she wanted me to.