PURGATORIO, Episode 202. The Episode In Which My Voice Breaks: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 25 - 48

Our pilgrim, Dante, may have opened his mouth to answer how he got to where he is in his corporeal body, but he's interrupted by something completely unexpected: a group of people, moving the opposite direction of everyone else on Mount Purgatory. He's witnessing the moment when love moves the fence. These are the homosexuals on the doorstep of heaven.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:38] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 25 - 48. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment to continue the conversation with me, scroll down this page.

[03:32] The passage is an interruption of people (à la Cavalcante with Farinata) and of tenses: It moves consistently into the narrative present tense.

[05:22] The passage begins with an emphasis on identification and novelty.

[06:34] Moving to the left, rather than the right, the new penitents reenact a moment of Christian fellowship and of Francesca's downfall.

[09:48] The first revolutionary simile: ants who nuzzle each other.

[12:25] The penitents cry out to explain who they are.

[15:34] The second revolutionary simile: cranes who migrate in opposite directions.

[18:08] Dante may rewrite Jeremiah's prophecy.

[20:04] Dante definitely reclassifies homosexuality--which may offer even more explosive implications than he intends.

[25:28] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 25 - 48.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 25 – 48

So said one of them to me, and I would have

Already identified myself, if I hadn’t paid attention

To another new thing that appeared before me.

Some people came along facing these others

And in the middle of the burning road.

These made me suppress my reply in wonderment.

In the flames, I could see that the shades from each side

Make haste and kiss one another,

Although without stopping, content with this brief greeting,

Just as, within their dark brown ranks,

One ant will nuzzle another,

Maybe to figure out the other’s path or fortune.

When they were done with this friendly welcome,

Right before they took their first step away,

Each worked hard to make more noise than the other.

The new people cried, “Sodom and Gomorrah!”

And the others [cried], “Pasiphaë goes into the cow

So that the bull can run toward her out of lust.”

After that, as if cranes were flying off, some toward

The Riphean mountains and some toward the desert sands—

Some avoiding the frost; and some, the sun—

The one group of people went on and the other came alongside,

All weeping as they went back to their first song

And to the cry that suited them the most.