Our pilgrim, Dante, arrives on the sixth, empty terrace of Mount Purgatory without a lot of fanfare. Instead, Statius and Virgil go ahead of him and talk about the craft of poetry. The passage is caught in the essential structural issue (and thematic one, too!) of COMEDY: circularity and linearity, fused into one state of being.
Read MoreVirgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. The sighs from that first circle of hell are transferred from the damned to the poet Dante (and to his reader). And the entire catalogue of the lost comes down to a final irony: Manto, lost in Dante’s own poem, misplaced and reassigned, a final misreading and misquotation in a canto full of them.
Read MoreVirgil finally gets to hear the story of Statius’s conversion. But for Statius to tell it, Dante the poet must make some concessions to the historical record, must account for the fact that Statius’s epic is dedicated to a Roman emperor, and must offer a compelling narrative vision . . . that devolves into the text as text, rather than as story.
Read MoreVirgil wants to know how Statius could have become a Christian since there’s no evidence of faith in his poetry about Thebes. Statius replies that it’s through Virgil’s poetry that he both became a poet and became a Christian. Damned Virgil lights the path to redemption.
Read MoreStatius answers Virgil’s question: He wasn’t guilty of avarice, as Virgil imagined. Statius spent all his money. And he learned the error of his ways when he interpreted a passage from Virgil’s AENEID . . . or rather, when he misquoted and misinterpreted the passage. We have to come to the quagmire of interpretation—and Dante’s hope for classical texts.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim begins his climb to the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory blinded and behind his two guides, Virgil and Statius. The drama of the pilgrim’s blindness is superseded by Virgil’s curiosity about Statius . . . complete with Virgil’s own misquotation of Francesca from INFERNO, Canto V.
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.
Read MoreIn 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 MoreDante the pilgrim and Virgil resume their walk along the fifth terrace of Purgatory, picking their way among the avaricious, when they’re brought to a stop by a mighty earthquake and much singing. Dante is afraid. Virgil tells him not to be . . . although Virgil seems afraid. There are references to divine births. And the walk continues apace.
Read MoreHugh Capet abruptly turns from the pilgrim Dante’s first question about who he was to his second question about why the pilgrim only heard Hugh’s voice on the fifth terrace of avarice. Along the way, Hugh Capet offers a brief but well-stocked list of those who have been done in by greed. Then he offers a curious, curt ending to his monologue: a person does as much as they want.
Read MoreHugh Capet, the almost legendary founder of the Capetian line of Frankish/French kings, winds up his monologue with a shocking turn of events: The French monarchy has become so bad that it has made the papacy under Boniface VIII, Dante’s arch enemy, look . . . not just good, but divine.
Read MoreHugh Capet continues the story of his family with three descendants who make a mess of Italy in Dante the poet’s own day: Charles I of Anjou, Charles of Valois, and Charles II of Anjou. The Capetian dynasty is driven mad by avarice, all starting with the acquisition of the dowry of Provence. (And in this passage, we get our first instance of antisemitism in COMEDY.)
Read MoreDante the pilgrim walks up to the soul who has been citing Mary, Fabricius, and Nicholas as his exemplars against avarice. The pilgrim finds himself with Hugh Capet, the legendary (and historical) founder of the Capetian dynasty of French kings. Or maybe not, since Dante the poet gets his historical wires crossed.
Read MoreDante and Virgil pick their way slowly among the avaricious shades, face down and immobile on the fifth terrace of Mount Purgatory. Dante the pilgrim is attracted by one soul ahead who is speaking out examples of poverty . . . and perhaps generosity. This voice leads the pilgrim right up to the next major figure of PURGATORIO.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim has to move on . . . because Pope Adrian V told him to. The pilgrim and Virgil pick their way among the crowds of penitents on the terrace of avarice. There are so many that the poet has to step out with a prophetic curse and a plea for a redeemer.
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