PURGATORIO, Episode 196. Virgil's Inadequacy on Full Display: PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, Lines 22 - 33

Our pilgrim, Dante, has asked a very pressing question: How can shades grow thin? How does the immaterial act like the material in the afterlife?

Virgil has given the pilgrim the confidence to ask this question. So Virgil takes the first crack at an answer. Problem is, he offers a whole unsatisfying answer and then turns the discussion over to Statius.

This passage is a curious introduction to Statius's coming discourse on embryology.

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

[02:42] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, lines 22 - 33. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:19] Curiosities in the medieval Florentine in lines 22 - 27.

[06:33] Virgil's two inadequate answers to the pilgrim's question.

[13:11] The wound of the intellect and their relation to poetry.

[17:35] Statius and the limitations of Virgil.

[20:04] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, lines 22 - 33.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, Lines 22 – 33:

He said, “If you recalled how Meleager

Consumed himself as a stick of wood is consumed,

This won’t be too acrid for you.

“If you thought how your squirming

Makes your image squirm in a mirror,

That which seems hard will turn out to be easy to chew.

“In any event, to calm you inside of what you want,

Behold our Statius! I call on him and beg him

To now be the one to clean out your wounds.”

“If I unknot the eternal plan for him

Right in front of you,” Statius replied,

“Let my excuse be that I can’t deny you [anything].”