PURGATORIO, Episiode 47. The Garbled Logic Of A Classical Poet In A Christian Poem: PURGATORIO, Canto VI, Lines 25 - 48

The pilgrim Dante and Virgil pass on from the crowd. And now Virgil really becomes the loser.

Dante inquires about a passage in THE AENEID. And Virgil answers like a prof who is caught with a question he can't answer.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the second time in COMEDY that Virgil is forced to correct his masterpiece in front of Dante.

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

[01:19] My English translation of this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VI, lines 25 - 48. If you'd like to read along or print it off to make notes, please scroll down this page.

[03:36] Dante quizzes Virgil about the theology of the master's tragedy. What text is Dante the pilgrim referencing? THE AENEID, Book VI, around lines 373 - 376.

[05:44] Virgil replies with garbled logic, if not utter sophistry.

[11:21] The three most common medieval responses to classical texts like Virgil's.

[15:55] My personal theory: the poet Dante may still be in a bit of an infernal state of mind, seeing souls as "placed" rather than "in transit."

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto VI, Lines 25 – 48

The moment I got free from all that lot of shades

Who only prayed that others might pray for them,

So that they could make quick progress to their sanctified state,

I began [to say]: “It appears to me that you expressly denied,

O my light, in a certain text

That prayers might bend the decrees of heaven.

“Yet these people pray only for that.

Will their hopes then prove vain

Or are your words not fully clear to me?”

And he [Virgil] to me: “My writing is straightforward,

Yet their hopes are not false,

If you look at the case with a cleansed mind.

“That is to say, the height of justice is not brought low

If the fire of love fulfills, in an instant,

What those who are placed here must satisfy.

“In the textual spot where I made this point,

Human faults could not be rectified by praying,

Because those prayers were disconnected from God.

“In truth, don’t bother yourself with such questions,

Until she speaks to you—

She, a light between the truth and your intellect.

“I’m not sure you get it. I’m talking about Beatrice.

You will see her up top, way up on the summit

Of this mountain, smiling and happy.”