We come to the second monologue in PURGATORIO, Canto V. This time, we're on the other side of the battle of Campeldino with one of Dante's enemies. And we're on the other side of INFERNO, with a son whose father we saw damned with Ulysses and Diomedes.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this most surprising speech and continue to discuss the ways PURGATORIO is changing the game for Dante's masterpiece, COMEDY.

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

[01:19] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto V, lines 85 - 129. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or drop a comment on this episode, please scroll down this page.

[04:38] Who was Buonconte da Montefeltro?

[08:36] A positive and a negative node in the passage: a sense of humility and a growing misogyny in PURGATORIO.

[13:11] Dante the poet offers a ham-handed narrative tercet while also forgiving his enemy, Buonconte--in other words, bad form but good ethics.

[14:25] Buonconte's speech is the first true node of the veneration of the Virgin Mary in COMEDY. But there's also a problem here. What or whom is Buonconte actually forgiving?

[18:05] Buonconte brings up the problem of veracity in COMEDY by foregrounding the credulity (or incredulity) of his story.

[22:01] There are demonic voices in PURGATORIO!

[23:26] There are more bits of Virgil's GEORGICS in this passage. Even more important, Buonconte's speech shows that COMEDY is becoming more and more encyclopedic.

[27:35] Two shocking bits. Apparently, one needn't be buried in sacred ground. And Dante the poet gives the more learned speech to his former enemy.

[29:49] Four ways Buonconte's speech ties back to Jacopo del Cassero's: 1) Campeldino, 2) bloody deaths, 3) a tour of Italian geography, and 4) distinct references back to INFERNO.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto V, Lines 85 – 129

Then another one said, “Hey, so that your desire

To haul yourself up to the heights of this mountain may be fulfilled,

Help mine because of beneficent pity.

 

“I came from Montefeltro. I am Buonconte.

Neither Giovanna nor anyone else gives a hoot about me—

That’s why I go among these with my forehead bent low.”

 

And I to him, “What force or accident

Pushed you so far away from Campaldino,

So that your grave was never discovered?”

 

“Oh,” he replied, “a stream called the Archiano

Crosses the foot of the Casentino.

That stream is born in the Apennines above the Hermitage.

 

“Just at the spot where its demarcation becomes meaningless,

I arrived with a gash in my throat.

I was fleeing on foot but bleeding out across the plain.

 

“That’s where I lost my sight and my words.

I met my end on Mary’s name—and that’s where.

I fell. All that remained of me was my flesh.

 

“I’ll tell the truth—and you repeat it among the living.

The angel of God gathered me up, yet one from hell

Cried out, ‘Hey you from heaven! How come you rob me?’

 

“’You cart off the eternal part of this guy.

Because of one little teardrop he’s yanked away from me.

But I’ll do with the rest of him as I see fit!’

 

“You certainly know how damp vapors

Condense into water as they rise

Up to where the cold can gather them together.

 

“That evil will combined with its intellect

To search for how to do more evil. It moved the mists and winds

By means of its natural powers,

 

“So that when the day was over, he dispersed a fog into that valley

That goes from Pratomagno up to the mountain chain,

A fog so dense

 

“That the pregnant air was morphed into water.

The rain fell and the ditches got all of it

That the ground couldn’t absorb.

 

“They joined forces into rushing torrents

That sluiced down into the valley with such force

That nothing could hold them back.

 

“My frozen body was found right at the mouth

Of the rushing Archiano, which swept it along

Into the Arno, pulling the cross off my chest

 

“That I’d made with my arms when pain had conquered me.

The river rolled me along its banks and its bottom,

Then covered and buried me in its debris.”