Beatrice concludes her first indictment of Dante, our pilgrim, by telling him that he has missed the proper subject matter for this talent all along: herself and the damned. In so doing, she brings him to the place where he, the artist, can begin to forgive his own failings in his craft.
Read MoreWhat happens when you don’t get the redemption you want? Beatrice is now fully in charge, standing in the chariot with the hundred angels. She’s able to tell those heavenly beings what they can’t know. And she’s able to detail Dante’s failings so that his guilt and his grief can come to some sort of equal measure.
Read MoreBeatrice has offered her first condemnation of Dante and even the angels who surround her in the chariot seem surprised at the level of her vitriol. They sing a psalm to comfort the pilgrim—but having already seen his own reflection and looked away, it instead melts the ice sheet that has so long encased his heart.
Read MoreBeatrice finally utters her first words in COMEDY (other than those reported by Virgil way back in INFERNO, Canto II). Virgil had promised the sweet consoling eyes of this lady. Instead, she is an imperious admiral, at the head of her ship, ready to name our pilgrim, Dante, and willing to call him out for all this faults.
Read MoreUnder a veil of flowers, clothed in the colors of the parade of revelation, Beatrice finally appears in COMEDY, some wild second coming, almost the advent of Christ, standing in the chariot, like the rising sun. Her arrival can only mean one thing: Virgil’s departure. He exits the poem in a moment of great sadness without a hint of sentimentality.
Read MoreThe parade of revelation has come to a stop. Everything is in great anticipation. Even the constellations seems to have stopped turning. A voice calls out, expecting the bride. A hundred angels appear, expecting the groom. It’s the ceremonial marriage of Christ to his church . . . or it would be, if a quotation from THE AENEID didn’t darken the whole scene.
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.
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