In a very human and funny scene, Dante the pilgrim is caught between two poetic mentors, Statius and Virgil. It’s a battle of the wills . . . inside of Dante, who is finding that his emotions are more fundamental even than his will, all in a canto that is a hymn to the human will and that ends in the same spot another canto ended.
Read MoreThe unknown soul finally names himself: Statius, the epic Roman poet, a major influence on COMEDY, and a full-on shock. How could a pagan Roman poet end up on Mount Purgatory, headed to heaven? And how can this poet find himself face to face with his own poetic inspiration and apparently the bearer of God’s revelation: the damned Virgil.
Read MoreThe still-unknown shade answers Virgil’s questions with an explosive claim: The souls on Mount Purgatory stand up and declare their own purity. Their will is its only proof. But this is an easy passage to misread (or just overstate) in the modern world. There are at least two safeguards the soul’s answer.
Read MoreThe unknown shade on the fifth terrace of Mount Purgatory begins to answer Virgil’s questions by referring to Aristotelian notions of change . . . and then begins wrapping the imagery and poetry of Cantos XX and XXI back onto themselves for a gorgeous lyrical tapestry amid the classical learning.
Read MoreThe unknown shades wants to know how two escapees from hell have made their way up Mount Purgatory. Virgil has to explain that the pilgrim Dante is still alive . . . and he does so with a knot of classical imagery before pressing on to the question of “why” the mountain just shook and all the souls shouted in one voice.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim is left wondering why Mount Purgatory has shaken so hard . . . and then he’s confronted by an even deeper mystery: a shade appears, seemingly out of nowhere, reminiscent of the appearances of Virgil and Cato earlier in COMEDY. It’s a wild start to one of the finest cantos in COMEDY.
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.
Read More