PURGATORIO, Episode 204. Queenly Embeasting: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 67 - 93

We finally come to know who has been our spokesperson for the lustful penitents: Guido Guinizzelli, perhaps the most important Italian poet working before Dante.

Guinizzelli explains who the penitents are by using two classical allusions and even making up words to describe their sin, in the ways that poets always manipulate and even invent language.

This passage is a shocking example of Dante's changing notion of homosexuality. Let’s work through its rather high, ornate rhetoric to discover that in fact there's more fusion that just marriage, than two become one. In fact, our poet is fusing his poetry with Guinizzelli's.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:52] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 67 - 93. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, scroll down this page.

[04:10] Why are the mountaineer penitents gawking? What makes them feel rough and rugged?

[07:28] The pilgrim Dante receives a beatitude from another poet in the borderland that is Purgatory itself.

[09:14] Julius Caesar is slurred as "Queen."

[13:20] Heterosexuality is the fusion of male and female: "And the two shall become one."

[17:04] Guido Guinizzelli identifies himself, although he's been in the words of this passage all along.

[21:26] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 67 - 93.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 67 – 93

In the same way, the mountaineer is not any less confounded,

Gawking and falling silent,

When he comes into a town, looking all rough and ragged,

Than each shade seemed to be by its expression.

But then they got over their amazement—

It’s quickly attenuated in hearts set on high.

He who’d questioned me began again:

“Blessed are you, who from our marginal territory,

Takes on the cargo of whatever you experience so you can die a better death!

“The people who are not coming with us made the offense

That Caesar did when, although triumphant,

He heard himself named ‘Queen’ as a slur.

“That’s why they move on crying out ‘Sodom’—

To reproach themselves, just as you heard.

They enhance the flames with their shame.

“Our sin was that of the hermaphrodite.

But because we didn’t submit to human law

And followed our appetites like the beasts,

“When we move away from those others,

We reproach ourselves by calling out the name of the one

Who embeasted herself in the bestial wood.

“Now you know our actions and what our defect was.

If perhaps you’d like to know our names,

There’s no time to tell them and I wouldn’t know anyway.

“But I’ll tone down your wish when it comes to me.

I am Guido Guinizzelli. I’ve already purgated myself up here

Because I felt well-placed sorrow before I died.”