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We begin PURGATORIO, Canto IX, with a mess of classical imagery, a passage that's befuddled scholars for centuries. We won't come to any conclusions about it, other than to say that misdirection may well be the heart of the matter.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at this difficult opening to a central canto for PURGATORIO: the gate into the main matter of the canticle, the cornices where souls are purged (or purge themselves--but more on that to come!).

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

[01:55] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, lines 1 - 12. If you'd like to read along or continue this difficult discussion, please scroll down this page to the passage and the comments section.

[03:42] Sleeping, being human, and journeying in COMEDY.

[06:53] The first mess in the passage: Tithonus, his wife, and his concubine.

[10:48] The second mess in the passage: the signs of the zodiac.

[13:03] The third mess in the passage: the three steps of the night.

[15:56] The first common solution to the mess: European time v. Purgatorial time.

[18:08] The second common solution: the concubine and the moon.

[19:28] My solution: poetic play and classical imagery, not classical control of that imagery.

[26:42] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, lines 1 - 12.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto IX, Lines 1 – 12

The concubine of ancient Tithonus

Was starting to glow white on the balcony of the east,

As she did when she got up from her sweet lover’s arms.

Her forehead glittered with jewels

Which were positioned in the shape of the cold animal

That strikes people with its tail.

From where we were, night had made it up

Two of the steps it climbs, so that the wings

For the third were already flagging,

When I, who still had something from Adam about me

And overcome with sleep, lay back in the grass

Where all five of us were already seated.