PURGATORIO, Episode 209. The Whole World Is On Fire: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, Lines 1 - 18

Our pilgrim has come to an impasse: the flames of lust. There's no way forward except to step into them. He must finally feel the sufferings that he has witnessed over the course of COMEDY to this point.

This suffering comes after a discussion of the craft of poetry, after a unifying vision of the world, and after Dante's own memories of both seeing people be burned alive as capital punishment and being sentenced to the same fate if he returns from exile.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:53] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 1 - 18. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, drop down this page.

[03:52] The unifying, globalizing view to begin this transitional canto.

[08:36] The global, totalizing perspective v. the confusion of personal references in the passage.

[11:52] The difficulties of handling multiple perspectives in narratives.

[16:29] The global perspective v. Dante's personal memories and experience.

[24:00] The beatitude in the passage: "Blessed are the pure in heart."

[25:42] The beatitudes in all of PURGATORIO . . . and the missing one of the seven from the Gospel of Matthew.

[28:26] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 1 - 18.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, Lines 1 – 18:

At the moment when his first rays are shot

To the place where his maker shed his blood,

While the [river] Ebro lies beneath Libra,

And noon chars the waves of the Ganges,

So stood the sun—[that is to say,] the day was waning

As the happy angel of God appeared.

He stood just up above the embankment of flames

And sang, “Beati mundo corde!”

[He had] a voice even more alive than our own.

Then “There’s no going forward, you sanctified souls,

Without the bite of the fire. Get into it

And don’t close your ears to the song on the other side,”

He said as we neared him.

Thus, when I heard him, I became like

A guy who has been shoved into a pit.

I bent over my hands out in front of me,

Staring into the fire and graphically imagining

Human bodies that I’d already seen burned up.