PURGATORIO, Episode 212. The Third And Final Dream On Mount Purgatory: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, Lines 91 - 108

Our pilgrim has lain down on a step of the final staircase of Mount Purgatory, positioned between Statius below and Virgil above him.

As he watches the large and bright stars, he suddenly falls asleep to dream of Leah (and her sister Rachel) in an Edenic garden, the hope for self-reflection bound up in the promise of the contemplative life.

This dream may well begin to sum up Dante's notion of how a human finds the divine.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:29] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 91 - 108. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, scroll down this page.

[03:05] The players around and in the dream: Cytherea, Leah, and Rachel.

[10:40] Three interpretations of the dream. One, a pre-fall Even and a post-redemption Eve in the Garden of Eden.

[12:50] Two, a Biblical dream after two classical dreams, but all deeply sexual in nature.

[17:26] Three, two modes for revelation: the active life and the contemplative life.

[19:03] Dantean psychology: finding the divine in the beloved leads to finding the divine in the self.

[23:22] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 91 - 108.

My English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XXVII, Lines 91 – 108:

As I so ruminated and looked at [the stars],

I was snatched up by sleep, sleep that often knows

What is to happen before it knows the news.

In that hour, I believe, when Cytherea

First shone on the mountain in the east—

Cytherea always seems hot with the fires of love—

In a dream I seemed to see a young and beautiful lady

Walking through a meadow

And gathering flowers as she sang, saying:

“Let anyone who asks my name know

That I am truly Leah. I go along

Using my beautiful hands to make a garland.

“To please myself I adorn myself for the mirror.

But my sister Rachel never leaves her reflection.

She sits in front of it all day long.

“She wants to look into her own gorgeous eyes

As much as I want to adorn myself with my own hands.

She by seeing and I by tending find our contentment.”