PURGATORIO, Episode 183. The Heroic Nella Donati: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 76 - 90

Dante the pilgrim and his rival/friend/fellow poet Forese Donati continue to talk about their concerns: suffering, placement on the mountain, and the role of the living in the  service of the dead.

Along the way, they seem to be coming closer and closer to the Christian idea of redemptive suffering, a complex stance in the face of the nihilism that almost overwhelms the suffering in INFERNO behind us.

Let’s explore these problems, plus talk about Forese's wife, Nella, and the role of the vernacular in exploring and explaining the deepest truths.

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

[01:37] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 76 - 90. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[03:17] The changing notion of suffering--yes, in COMEDY, but even in this small passage.

[07:20] Accounting for time, souls, and their ascents on Mount Purgatory.

[13:32] Nella Donati and two interpretive stances toward her place in the poem: 1) correcting the record or 2) hoping for a full record of a poet's works.

[17:36] Vernacular language and its uncomfortable relationship with "higher" truths.

[24:03] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 76 - 90.

Here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 76 – 90

And I [said] to him, “Forese, from that day

On which you morphed from the world to a better life,

There haven’t been five years worth of revolutions until this moment.

“If the possibility to go on sinning first

Called it quits in you before the hour

Of the good sorrow arrived that remarries us to God,

“How have you already gotten up here?

I believed I’d find you down below

Where they pay back time for time.”

And he [said] to me, “I have been quickly led

To drink the sweet wormwood of our suffering

By my Nella with her deluge of weeping.

“With her devoted prayers and her sighs

She has pulled me from the coast of waiting

And has liberated me from the other circles. . . .”