Virgil, Statius, and our pilgrim, Dante, walk along in deep contemplation, alone with their thoughts but still together. They are interrupted by a brilliantly shiny angel that points them up to the final terrace of Mount Purgatory. The pilgrim experiences a breeze without the help of his sight and the poet feels brave enough to rewrite one of Jesus’s beatitudes.
Read MoreOur pilgrim Dante, Virgil, and Statius pass on along the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory and come to a tree that's a seedling from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. It shakes them up a bit and offers a classical and a Biblical example of the problems with gluttony.
Read MoreThe conversation between the pilgrim Dante and Forese Donati may be one of the most significant in COMEDY. It’s not only incredibly structured, it also moves from friendship to poetic craft and then out into social exaltation. It’s got three balanced prophecies and it may well be the poet’s attempt to find at long last some sort of personal reconciliation with the Donati clan.
Read MoreForese Donati ends his conversation with the pilgrim Dante on Purgatory’s sixth terrace of gluttony with an apocalyptic vision of the near future—that is, the ruin of his own brother, Corso Donati. He then morphs into a glorious knight as the pilgrim is left on the terrace with the grand marshals of this world, Virgil and Statius.
Read MoreDante 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 has finished his screed against Florentine women and is ready to hear how the pilgrim Dante got so far up Mount Purgatory while still in the flesh. Dante obliges and also renegotiates the terms of the opening and even the plot of COMEDY as we near the climax of the second canticle, of PURGATORIO.
Read MoreForese Donati launches into his screed against Florentine women by reaffirming his love for his wife, Nella. He vaults into the high style of a prophetic voice, referencing prophecies from Isaiah, all while using the vernacular Florentine to offer a lyrical subtext to his stern (and ultimately false) condemnation.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and his rival/friend/fellow poet Forese Donati go on talking about suffering and the nature of the ascent up the mountain. In doing so, they must speak about Forese’s wife, Nella. Dante has previously insulted her in the sonnet rivalry. Now, she’s a heroic figure who nonetheless brings us back to the problem of stating the higher truths in the vernacular.
Read MoreDante and Forese, friends and poetic rivals, continue their conversation on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory among the emaciated, skeletal gluttons. Forese’s suffering is clear and present, which makes them both pause on the central crux of being human: how to interpret the pain we feel.
Read MoreDante the poet muddies his text with increasingly opaque literary references until finally the pilgrim encounters a fellow, contemporary vernacular poet, not someone associated with the high style, but instead Forese Donati, a guy known for his vulgar, funny, hip, and insulting sonnets.
Read MoreOur pilgrim is still marveling at the mystical tree on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory—he has to be goaded on by Virgil, his “more than father.” As they walk along the terrace, they’re soon overtaken by skeletal, cadaverous penitents who find that the pilgrim himself is a source of marvel.
Read MoreStatius and Virgil head out across the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. They’re stopped by an upside-down tree in the path. A voice in the tree warns them off, then admonishes them with examples of those who were moderate in their appetites . . . and the wonders of the classical age.
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.
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