PURGATORIO, Episode 176. Placing And Misplacing Your Classical Ancestors: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 94 - 114

At the end of their first conversation, Virgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. They transform it into a neighborhood where all the lost, classical writers live.

They also transfer limbo's sighs from the damned to the poet Dante and potentially to his reader. Where have these great authors gone?

And if their texts are one way to God, how many ways to redemption have then been lost with them?

 Then we end at a place of the final misreading and misquotation: that of COMEDY itself.

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

[02:25] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, lines 94 - 114. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:31] The reconception of limbo over the course of COMEDY.

[09:56] The Roman authors in the list of those lost.

[17:48] The Greek authors in the list of those lost;.

[21:02] The characters from Statius' poems who are apparently in limbo.

[24:55] The displacement of Manto in COMEDY: the final misreading and misquotation in a canto full of them.

[27:57] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, lines 94 - 114.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXII, Lines 94 – 114

“Okay, now you, [Virgil,] who took the cover off of

All the good that I’m talking about—

And while we still have some ways to climb—

“Tell me where our ancient Terrance is,

As well as Caecilius, Plautus, and Varro, if you know.

Tell me if they are damned and on what street.”

My leader replied, “These as well as Persius, I,

And many others are with that Greek

To whom the muses bestowed more milk than any other.

“[We’re in] the first circle of the blind prison.

We often chat about the mountain

That forever holds our nurses.

“Euripides is with us, as well as Antiphon,

Simonides, Agathon, and many other Greeks

Who once wore laurels on their foreheads.

“There, of your people, one can see

Antigone, Deipyle, and Argia,

As well as Ismene, as sad as she ever was.

“There one can [also] see the one who pointed out Langia.

The daughter of Teresias is there—and Thetis,

As well as Deidamia with her sisters.”