PURGATORIO, Episode 53. Virgil Returns To Center Stage: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, Lines 1 - 15

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We've come out of the invective against Italian strife and returned to the plot of COMEDY--and Dante the poet clearly wants to return Virgil to the center of the narrative's stage.

But can he? How is Virgil's position negotiated and renegotiated as the damned Virgil walks on into the redeemed landscape.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore our return to storytelling in a passage in which Dante the pilgrim seems to fall through the cracks of Dante the poet's larger strategies.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:51] My English translation of this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, lines 1 - 15. You can find it just down this page.

[03:24] The emotional space that opens PURGATORIO, Canto VII, and may re-establish Virgil's position in COMEDY.

[09:04] Virgil names himself for the first time in COMEDY and offers a rationale (maybe!) for his damnation. But isn't Cato always in the offing?

[15:59] Sordello suddenly becomes uncertain (no longer a crouching lion?) in the face of the great poet.

[18:27] The redeemed Sordello abases himself in front of the damned Virgil.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto VII, Lines 1 – 15

After these honorable and easy-going greetings

Had been reiterated three or four times,

Sordello took a step back and said, “You guys? Who are you?”

“Before any souls worthy of climbing toward God

Were shown and turned toward this mountain,

My bones had been interred by Octavian.

“I am Virgil—and for no other wickedness

Did I lose heaven than for not having faith.”

That was how my leader replied to that other soul.

As a guy who suddenly sees something right in front of him,

Something that makes him marvel, both believing it and not,

Saying all the while, “It is . . . no, it isn’t . . . ,”

So it was with this one [Sordello]. He bowed his forehead

And walked back humbly toward him [Virgil].

He bent down low to clasp him as an inferior would.