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Dante dreams his way to the gate of Purgatory, using three classical images that explain his sexual rapture in the presence of divine love but also give his journey a texture of sadness.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for the first dream of PURGATORIO. Let's explore the classical imagery from Ovid, Virgil, and Statius, as well as Dante's rather unusual medieval attitude toward homosexuality.

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

[03:16]     My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, lines 13 - 42. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation, please scroll down this page.

[05:24]     Dante's morning dream is truthful AND puts to rest the notion that COMEDY itself is somehow a dream.

[07:55]     The first classical image: Tereus, Procne, and Philomel.

[11:36]     The second classical image: Ganymede, Zeus, and the eagle.

[14:22]     The third classical image: Achilles on Skyros.

[17:22]     Love, fire, and the divine mission of COMEDY.

[19:11]     The classical imagery adds a sorrowful texture to the passage because real conversion always involves loss.

[22:31]     The opening of PURGATORIO, Canto IX, is about unrefined, unpurged, or "unnatural" love.

[25:14]     Dante sees homosexuality as nonetheless a form of love, a dramatic step for a medieval thinker.

[28:44]     Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, lines 13 - 42.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto IX, Lines 13 – 42

At the hour so close to morning

That the swallow starts up her sad songs,

Perhaps as a memorial to her sorrows from ages ago,

 

And when our mind—more like a pilgrim

From our flesh and less hemmed in by our thoughts—

Is a prophet in its visions,

 

In a dream I thought I saw an eagle

With golden feathers way up in the sky,

Its wings open and intent on a dive.

 

It seemed to me I was in the very spot

Where Ganymede abandoned his own kin

When he was lofted to the supreme council.

 

So I thought, Maybe it’s mere habit

That makes that bird strike right here,

Disdaining to pick someone up from anywhere else with its claws.

 

Then it seemed to me that after it wheeled about a bit,

It shot down as terrible as lightning

And ravaged me up to the sphere of fire.

 

Up there, it seemed as if both it and I ignited.

The imagined burning was so intense

That my sleep was broken to bits.

 

It wasn’t any different from the way Achilles jumped up,

Straining his surprised eyes in a wide circle

And not knowing where he was

 

When his mother carried him asleep

But in her arms from Chiron to Skyros,

From which point the Greeks would later take him away.

 

Like that, I woke up with any trace of sleep

Gone from my face. I then turned pale,

Like a guy who can’t move because he’s so afraid.