Dante claime to be the poet who takes love’s inspired dictation, but Bonagiunta has more to say about ut: He names this new poetry, perhaps minimizes its impact, and passes on content. The poet Dante enters the discourse to offer a classical simile that is hardly inspired, just lifted from Lucan. A most curious passage, the one that has caused the most commentary of any in PURGATORIO.
Read MoreBonagiunta, a poet from the previous generation and one of the gluttons pointed out by Forese Donati on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory, offers the pilgrim an opaque prophecy and then wonders if this pilgrim is the same guy who wrote a long poem in the VITA NUOVA. The pilgrim replies that he is that poet . . . and then goes onto make a wild claim about poetic inspiration.
Read MoreForese Donati continues his conversation with Dante the pilgrim by pointing out five of the penitent gluttons who surround them and by using culinary and gastronomical imagery to reinforce both the thematics and the irony of this terrace (and perhaps to add fuel to the fire of the rivalry between French and Italian cuisine).
Read MoreForese Donati and our pilgrim Dante continue their conversation from Canto XXIII of PURGATORIO on the terrace of the gluttons. We are met with three curiosities: Virgil’s on-going silence, Statius’s apparently very strong will (that can even slow down his ultimate desire), and our first glimpse of Paradise, a classical glimpse of Forese’s sister, Piccarda.
Read MoreA read-through of Purgatorio, Cantos XXII, XXIII, and XXIV. A rough translation before we break it into smaller parts for deeper analysis. The ascent from the fifth terrace of avarice (and we learn, another sin) to the sixth terrace of gluttony: an arboretum with hollow, wasted souls purging their love of wine and food.
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