PURGATORIO, Episode 24. Your Body, Your Alienation: Purgatorio, Canto III, Lines 10 - 21

Virgil has scurried off, apparently ashamed or somehow guilty (the damned can be guilty?) because of Cato's reprimand.

Now it's Dante's turn. As Virgil slows up, Dante first notices the giant mountain beside them--and then sees his own shadow and balks in fear.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore this implications of this dramatic and complicated passage in PURGATORIO, Canto III.

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

[01:23] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto III, lines 10 - 21. If you'd like to read along, print them off, or drop a comment, please scroll down this page.

[03:35] Virgil's frenzied pace reverses a moment in Limbo and echoes a moment in Inferno, Circle Seven, Ring Three: the running homosexuals.

[06:34] Dante the pilgrim has had no moment when he have seen any shadows--until now.

[08:32] Discovery leads to fear: the familiar emotional progression of COMEDY so far, and one that much now begin to change.

[11:56] Dante's first great neologism (new word) in PURGATORIO: the mountain "unlakes itself."

[14:20] Corporeality is a double-edged problem: the source of the soul's safety and the cause of its alienation.

[19:38] Rereading our passages in PURGATORIO from the beginning of Canto III: lines 1 - 21.

And here is my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto III, Lines 10 – 21

When his feet had left off of that frenzied pace

That robs every action of its dignity,

My mind—at first, held in check—

Broadened its outlook, as if [it were] on a fervent search.

I gave my full attention to the highest hill of all.

It unlakes itself up to the heavens.

Flaming its red rays behind me, the sunlight

Was cut up in front of me by my own figure,

In such a way that it was shaped by the rays resting on me.

I whipped around in fear,

Thinking I’d been abandoned once I saw

The ground before me darkened by me alone.