The 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 MoreThere are many unanswered questions in the first half of Oderisi’s speech. Why does Dante turn reticent about naming himself when he’s been so brash elsewhere (in the malebolge with the thieves)? How is the art of illumination, or miniaturization, connected to the new style of poetry Dante practices? And what’s the significance of Dante's meeting someone who spent his life working on manuscripts?
Read MoreOn Purgatory’s terrace of pride, Dante encounters Oderisi, an artist, a manuscript illuminator, who utters some of the most famous lines in PURGATORIO. Oderisi discusses the vagaries of artistic fame and finds himself both forgotten and yet still prideful . . . about as Dante, our poet, who seems to vaunt his fame high in the passage but may actually be bringing himself pretty low.
Read MoreWe hear from the first penitent beyond the gate of Purgatory proper: Omberto Aldobrandesco. He’s from a storied, titled family who switched sides, became Guelphs, and were brought low. Is Omberto humbled? Or is he still prideful? Or is he both? And why does Dante choose such a boring figure to begin our conversations on the terraces of Purgatory proper?
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 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.
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