A (sort of?) short summary of PURGATORIO, Cantos I through XVII. To see the imaginative sweep. To remember where we’ve been. And to set us up for the questions ahead, both in the remainder of PURGATORIO and indeed on into PARADISO.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim (and even Dante the poet!) may have met his match with Sapia on Purgatory’s second terrace, the ledge of the envious. She manipulates him into a confessional moment, then either turns that confession into flattery or comedy, all to get what she wants: a refurbished reputation back among the living. She’s caught in the human dilemma: neither good nor bad but a wild mix in-between.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim, goaded by Virgil, has worked up the courage (or the flattery) to prompt one of the souls to speak on Purgatory’s second terrace, the landscape of the envious. She does . . . and gives Dante both more and exactly what (or in fact, perhaps a bit less) than he asked for. Her reticence, her generosity: the combined tension inside the human problem of envy.
Read MoreDante tiptoes by the envious on Purgatory’s second terrace, thinking he’s making some gaffe by staying silent. But Virgil is having none of it. He tells Dante to be brief . . . and Dante launches into overblown flattery (reminiscent of a certain moment for Virgil in INFERNO XIII). How much irony is found in the texture of this seemingly simple passage from PURGATORIO.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim finally sees the penitents on the second terrace of PURGATORIO. They’re huddled against each other, leaning back against the mountain’s cliff, and clothed in livid haircloth. But they also have their eyelids stitched shut with wire, blinded because of this sin that we have reinterpreted and tamed as jealousy but that entails so much more.
Read MoreIn PURGATORIO, Dante begins to incorporate more and more experimental and experiential truth into his poem, taking his cues from Aquinas and Aristotle. But if God is the author of all truth, how does any truth come from experiential sources, much less a pagan philosopher, particularly one whose writings have been reinvigorated by both Islamic and Jewish scholars?
Read MoreThe illuminator Oderisi continues his monologue on the first terrace of Purgatory proper. He points out a third penitent: the warlord and tyrant from Siena, Provenzan Salvani, who plotted Florence’s demise and perhaps foreshadows Dante’s exile. How are the pains of Purgatory not “contrapasso” as in INFERNO? What part does art play in history? And how does Dante imagine his own art changing its reader?
Read MoreDante the pilgrim sees the prideful penitents under the boulders and likens their burdens to the weight of dreams (the key landscape of the imagination in medieval thinking). What? Then Dante the poet steps out to teach us the lesson from the passage, asking us to pray for the penitents he himself has imagined. Finally, Virgil speaks without ever being given a dialogue cue, so we’re not sure who’s speaking until the end of nine lines. What’s going on?
Read MoreDante hears the first penitents of Purgatory proper. They’re the prideful, reciting the foundational prayer of Christian tradition. Except they’re not. Dante has rewritten this prayer, changing it from the liturgy and even from Jesus’s words as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. How and why does Dante feel he has the freedom to rewrite the very foundations of his faith?
Read MoreDante the pilgrim has been alerted to figures coming around the bend of the first terrace of Purgatory proper. But neither he nor Virgil, his guide, is able to discern what’s what until Dante the poet interrupts the story and then the pilgrim uses art to understand what didn’t resemble people at all.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim is still gawking at the art in the marble of the first terrace of Purgatory when the first of the penitents round the bend. Virgil spots them . . . and then murmurs to the pilgrim. Murmurs? Like the Israelites in the wilderness? Or like an older poet when confronted with the exuberance of a younger poet?
Read MoreDante moves on to the third intaglio (or carving) in the marble of the first terrace of Purgatory proper. This time, he finds a scene (allegedly) from the life of the Roman emperor Trajan, a scene so real that the marble apparently comes to life and offers a dramatic dialogue between Trajan and a bereaved mother, as (carved) eagles soar overhead and knights tramp the ground.
Read MoreDante moves beyond his guide Virgil (or is prodded to move beyond him for curious reasons) to see the second intaglio or carving in the marble on the terrace of pride in PURGATORIO. Here, Dante continues his dangerous game, enhancing the realism of the art on the wall of Mount Purgatory with imagined details that offer the best “realism” in the scene.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and (shockingly) Virgil arrive on the first deserted terrace of Purgatory proper to discover marvelous carvings in the white marble (although still no souls in sight). These first images of artistic production allow the poet to begin to develop his theory of art, one of the major achievements of his time on the terraces of Mount Purgatory.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and Virgil, his guide, make it through the dramatic gate of Purgatory proper only to be met with silence: a hard climb to a deserted open spot that edges out toward the void. This passage from PURGATORIO, Canto X is an amazing bit of emotional drama: a Purgatorial letdown after we’ve finally gotten inside the world of the redeemed penitents.
Read MoreA read-through of PURGATORIO, Cantos X - XII, using my rough English translation. Dante the pilgrim and Virgil have come through the wildly dramatic gate of Purgatory and climbed to the first terrace of Purgatory proper, where those who are guilty of the sin of pride must unburden themselves in a most ironic fashion. Sit back and enjoy the plot of this first locale in Purgatory itself.
Read MoreDante and Virgil finally enter Purgatory proper in a passage that’s a strange amalgam of Lucan and Virgil, Roman history and Christian resolution, screeching and singing, warnings and blessings, the Bible and Ovid—and complete mash-up of all that makes our walk across the known universe with Dante so intriguing.
Read MoreDante arrives at the gate of Purgatory—but not without Virgil’s effort. Hauled up the steps, Dante then sees the angel more clearly, particularly the angel’s ashy robes. That angel has two jobs: to open the door with his two keys and to carve seven letters into Dante’s forehead. Like so much of COMEDY, this passage is remarkably murky and yet psychologically astute.
Read MoreDante and Virgil see the three steps to the entrance of Purgatory proper with an angel sitting on up at the very threshold to the next realm. But these steps have caused 700 years of interpretive fury. They’re allegorical, to be sure. But maybe there’s a way to scrape the critical apparatus off the steps and see these steps in a new way.
Read MoreDante had seemed so full of confidence when he found out his dream of fire and rape was not true but instead a representation of his being carried by Lucy up the mountain as he slept. But when Dante the pilgrim gets in front of the guardian of Purgatory’s gate, the angel proves so forbidding that the pilgrim falls silence. Fortunately, Virgil is ever ready to speak up.
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