The procession continues through Eden and away from Lethe until it’s stopped by a dark, frigid place, even in this spot of primal innocence. It’s also stopped for us the readers because the fair lady tending the garden finally gets a name: Matelda. Who is she? Why has she been so hard to interpret for seven hundred years?
Read MoreAfter Beatrice’s final discourse in PURGATORIO, Dante admits he has images stamped on his brain from what he’s seen and heard although he doesn’t understand much of what she means. Beatrice then launches into a condemnation of whatever school Dante has followed, before making a promise for greater clarity ahead.
Read MoreAwakened from his third fainting spell, Dante is pulled through the river Lethe by the young woman who welcomed him and his poets to the Garden of Eden. She forcefully dunks his head into the water, then places him among the four women dancing on the left side of the chariot around Beatrice.
Read MoreWailing, Dante is silent in the face of Beatrice’s indictment. She is impatient to hear his confession. But she’s also done the unthinkable: she’s robbed a poet of his words. He’s left speechless in front of her . . . about the way he was in front of Francesca back in INFERNO.
Read MoreLet’s read through the next chunk of PURGATORIO: Cantos XXX and XXXI. In many ways, these cantos are the climax of the first part of COMEDY: Beatrice arrives and is nothing like what we might have expected.
Read MoreThe lady across the stream in Eden continues her answer to the pilgrim Dante’s questions about the breeze and the water. In so doing, she offers the botany of Eden and our world, an ecology of Eden, and even the hydrolics of the place, layering meaning over meaning until we enter a fully imagined landscape.
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