PURGATORIO, Episode 182. Pain, Solace, And Being Human: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 49 - 75

Having met his poetic rival, Forese Donati, Dante the pilgrim must make sense of the clear and present pain he sees in friend's face.

This passage is a curious example of felix culpa, the fortunate fall, in which suffering must be reinterpreted for the greater good. Except the pain doesn't stop being the pain. Suffering remains the central metaphysical question of the human condition, the experiential crux underneath our high-minded notions of ontology.

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

[01:42] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 49 - 75. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:08] Best friends, still perhaps vain, still perhaps rivals.

[10:39] A power in the water and the tree--and an intense interpretive knot.

[14:56] The problem of hunger and thirst among disembodied souls.

[18:50] The interpretation of suffering as the crux of being human.

[26:15] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 49 - 75.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 49 – 75

“Oy! Neither pay attention to the desiccated scales

That stain me,” he pleaded,

“Nor to the paltry amounts of flesh that I carry around.

“But tell me the truth about yourself [and] tell [me] who are

Those two souls who make your escort.

Don’t hold back from telling me everything!”

I replied to him, “I wept for your face at your death.

It gives me no less sorrow nor no fewer lamentations [now],

Seeing how deformed it is.

“Therefore tell me, for God’s sake, what strips you bare.

Don’t force me to talk while I’m gobsmacked—

Becauce he speaks poorly [about one thing] who is filled with desire [for another].”

And he [said] to me, “From the eternal consciousness

A power falls into the water and the tree

Back behind us. That’s why I’m emaciated.

“Because they once followed their gullets without measure,

All of these weeping people sing

To make themselves holy again through hunger and thirst.

“The need to drink and to eat is enflamed [in us]

By the perfume of the fruit and the spray

That spreads out over the foliage.

“And our pain isn’t rekindled by just one revolution

As we circle this floor.

I say pain but I should say solace—

“Because that wanting leads us to the trees

That led Christ to gladly say Eli

When he liberated us by means of his own veins.”