PURGATORIO, Episode 131. The Light Of The Imagination: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, Lines 1 - 18

Dante the pilgrim leaves Marco of Lombardy behind, but Dante the poet is not yet done with fundamental questions for his poem--particularly, how does he know what he knows? The answer lies in the imagination, the shaky ground that Dante posits is the basis of revelation.

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

[01:54] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, lines 1 - 18. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[03:26] The first canto in COMEDY that opens with a direct address to the reader may help us understand the reader that Dante has in mind for his poem.

[05:50] The smoke of anger becomes a fog and mist, which then becomes clouds, all of which happens as poetic space overlays poetic space in a metaphoric tour de force.

[10:08] Aristotle (and Aquinas) argued that the imagination is only based on sensory input.

[13:09] Dante may well disagree, offering the imagination as a mechanism of revelation.

[17:51] Dante begins to claim that his own poem is divinely inspired.

[20:58] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, lines 1 - 18.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XVII, Lines 1 – 18

Remember, reader, if you were ever in the Alps

And overtaken with a fog such that you couldn’t see

Except as moles do through the skin over their eyes—

[Remember] how when the humid, thick mist

Starts to diminish, the arc of the sun

Twinkles faintly inside it.

Then you’ll easily be able to imagine

How I soon came to see the sun,

Which was now close to setting.

In this way, matching my steps faithfully

With those of my master, I came out of that cloud

And into the rays that had already died on the shores far down below.

O imagination, which so thoroughy sweeps us away

From whatever is around us that

We couldn’t hear a thousand nearby trumpets,

Who moves you, when our own senses don’t bring you anything?

A light formed in the heavens moves you,

Either on its own or by a will that brings it down.