PURGATORIO, Episode 185. Renegotiating COMEDY As PURGATORIO Nears Its Climax: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 112 - 133

Forese has finished his diatribe about Florentine women and is now ready to hear Dante the pilgrim's story. Who did the pilgrim get here in the flesh?

The pilgrim retells the journey, renegotiating its opening and reconfiguring its theology, even this high up on the mountain, as we near the apocalyptic climax of PURGATORIO.

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

[01:27] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 112 - 133. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with a comment, please scroll down this page.

[04:09] A V-shaped structure reinforced for Canto XXIII.

[06:17] A question of what Forese should remember and how the opening of COMEDY should be understood.

[10:20] Further negotiations about the plot of COMEDY.

[14:22] The first time the pilgrim Dante names Beatrice and the first time he acknowledges the loss of Virgil.

[16:09] A curious moment: Virgil named and Statius unnamed.

[18:29] Two larger questions. One, COMEDY is a poem in process.

[20:03] Two, PURGATORIO replicates the structure of the New Testament.

[23:16] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 112 - 133.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 112 – 133

“Oy, brother, now unhide yourself from me without delay!

Look how not only I but all of these people

Stare at the spot where you block the sun.”

Thus, I [said] to him, “If you recall a mental image of

What you once were to me—and I, to you—

The present memory will still feel heavy.

“Just the other day, I was turned aside from that life

By this one who goes in front of me—

[That is,] when the sister of that one showed itself to be round.”

Here, I pointed to the sun. “This one led me

Through the depths of the night of the truly dead

In this, my true flesh, which follows him.

“From there he’s pulled me up by his buttressing,

Climbing and circling this mountain

That makes straight in you what the world bent.

“He says that he’ll keep me company

Until I am where Beatrice will be.

I must stick around there without him.

“It is Virgil who tells me this. . . ,”

And I pointed to him. “And this other is the shade

For whom your kingdom just now shook

Along its every slope as it frees itself of him.”