The parade of revelation continues as a griffin pulls a Roman victory chariot between the four living creatures that beside it. Dante the poet is combining military history, Biblical allegory, and Roman mythology into a single passage that has a shocking absence right at its center.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, is standing at a great observation point as the parade of divine revelation passes by him across the river Lethe. After the twenty-four lords in white, he sees four animals with green fronds for crowns. But he doesn’t have much time to describe them. Just go out and read the Biblical text . . . especially the one I don’t agree with!
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, turns back from Virgil to see more of the parade of revelation in the Garden of Eden . . . after the lady across Lethe reprimands him for paying way too much attention to the walking candlesticks. The poet heightens his craft to take in the tradition of apocalyptic literature while leaving lots of Easter eggs to his own text and altering Biblical imagery at will.
Read MoreThe pilgrim, Dante, stands on the shore of Lethe and witnesses the emergent revelation of the light in the forest. The air on fire? No, trees that walk? No, candelabra that walk. They emerge from the forest in a deft act of perception that brings a multiplicity of meanings into the open space of COMEDY.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, and the beautiful lady walk on, each on their own side of Lethe. They seem to leave the more open space and reenter the forest when a flash of light overwhelms the pilgrim. It’s the signal for the start of the great apocalyptic parade that will take up more of Canto XXIX. It’s also the catalyst for some very pernicious misogyny.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, has climbed the last staircase of Mount Purgatory. He’s been crowned and mitered by Virgil and so is free to wander about this unprecedented landscape at the top of the world’s tallest mountain, the closest point humans will ever get to the heavens above.
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