PURGATORIO, Episode 116. Scarcity, Abundance, And Poetics Between Terraces: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, Lines 34 - 57

Dante and Virgil encounter the awaited angel as they begin their ascent to the third terrace of Purgatory proper.

They hear two snippets of song. They find the climb easier. And Dante asks Virgil to gloss two lines Guido del Duca said back in Canto XIV. All these things indicate the shifting the nature of COMEDY itself as we enter its middle cantos.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this passage about the climb to the third terrace and see the shifting nature of COMEDY's audience and purpose.

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

[01:18] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 34 - 57. If you'd like to read along or continue the converation with me, please scroll down this page.

[03:31] An increasing emphasis on transitional figures and a more overt allegory in COMEDY as a whole.

[08:15] Two bits of song: a fragment of a beatitude in Latin (from Matthew 5:7) and an exhortation in medieval Florentine.

[12:07] The question who sings these two phrases.

[15:13] The shifting dynamic in COMEDY to the correction, not of behavior, but of the mind.

[18:44] Virgil's gloss on scarcity and abundance, as well as the civic threat of envy.

[26:42] The problem of the audience for Guido's (and Virgil's!) speech.

[30:45] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 34 - 57.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XV, Lines 34 – 57

When we got to the blessed angel,

He said with a happy voice, “Enter here

On a staircase that’s far less precipitous than others were.”

We were headed up, already having left him,

When Beati misericordes was sung

Behind us, as well as “Rejoice, each of you who conquers.”

My master and I were ascending on our own,

So I thought, while walking on,

I might realize some dividends from his words.

I turned to him and asked,

“What did the spirit from Romagna intend to say

When he mentioned things both forbidden and shared?”

At that, [Virgil] said to me, “He well understands the price

Paid because of his biggest flaw. Therefore, don’t be amazed

If he reproaches us to result in fewer lamentations from others.

“Because your desires point themselves to a spot

Where sharing lessens the whole,

Envy pumps the bellows of your sighs.

“But if the love of the highest sphere

Could twist your desire up toward it,

You wouldn’t hold those fears close to your chests.

“For the more that our is said up there,

The more of the good each one possesses—

And thus, the more charity provides warmth in that cloister.”