PURGATORIO concludes with threats to COMEDY as a whole, with further mysteries about Matelda’s character, with a final address to the reader about the bridle of the poem, and with four hopeful notes as the pilgrim Dante is ready to ascend to the stars.
Read MoreThe 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 MoreThe conclusion of Beatrice’s monologue at the end of PURGATORIO: fun calculations about Limbo, badly mixed metaphors, theories of writing and reading, as well as the reshaping of this journey across the known universe from a standard pilgrimage to a crusade.
Read MoreBeatrice continues her discourse in canto XXXIII at the top of Mount Purgatory by offering Dante both a job (to be her scribe) and a theory of his own craft (take notes, then wait to write). Along the way, Dante himself makes a rare mistake, a misquote from Ovid that lasted centuries in commentary before it was corrected.
Read MoreAfter some banter over the mannerly way to converse with Beatrice, she sets into the final discourse of PURGATORIO: her cryptic and apocalyptic discussion of the chariot, the times, and the coming of “five hundred ten and five, God’s messenger.” Her discourse is meant to prepare us for the elliptical and stylized language of PARADISO, just ahead of us.
Read MoreAfter the apocalyptic vision of Canto XXXII, after the giant has dragged the chariot and the whore into the woods of Eden, Beatrice and the seven ladies exchange Latin quotations from the Bible, then Beatrice turns to Dante and accepts him as her walking companion in the terrestrial Paradise.
Read MoreRather than a passage by passage analysis of the final two cantos of PURGATORIO, sit back and enjoy a read-through of my loose translation of the climax of this second canticle in Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY. We come to the densest and most difficult passages yet in the poem. Let’s get ready for more analysis ahead.
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