Dante’s dream continues with the ugly woman turned beautiful . . . and then into a siren. She sings a song about Ulysses (a song that gets his story wrong but brings him back into COMEDY) before a holy speedy lady descends to request Virgil’s aid in (once again) saving Dante the pilgrim.
Read MoreOur pilgrim Dante falls asleep on the fourth terrace of Mount Purgatory, just as he’s been passed by the racing slothful. The night air is chilly and his dream is chillier: a deformed woman made beautiful by our pilgrim’s act of observing her.
Read MoreThe fifth terrace of Purgatory: a read-through of PURGATORIO, Cantos XIX, XX, and XXI. The terrace of the avaricious, which includes a late-to-repent pope, one of the founders of the French monarchy, and the Roman poet Statius who is so enamored with Virgil that he almost makes a grave mistake in the middle of Purgatory.
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