Our pilgrim, Dante, gets into the flames of lust and comes out to a call for the redeemed to enter Paradise. Except those flames don’t burn up irony. Instead, they cause us to imagine the damned Virgil inside them. And we find out that our pilgrim isn’t perhaps as redeemed as we might first think.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, stands on the brink of the flames of lust on the seventh and last terrace of Mount Purgatory. Virgil has to use every rhetorical trick in his bag to get the pilgrim to move . . . although the only thing that works is the mention of Beatrice. Her name causes our poet to try to solve the dilemma of desire in his theological context, while thinking about the beast of fraud.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, has come to an impasse: the flames of lust. He must pass through them and finally feel the suffering (or perhaps the violence) that he has witnessed all along in COMEDY. Perhaps he thought he was going to get through unscathed. But your art must finally find its home in your body. So get into those flames!
Read MoreAs we pass Arnaut Daniel, the final penitent soul on Mount Purgatory, let’s look back over the poets we’ve met, the ways love has expressed itself in poetry, the problems with Francesca back in INFERNO as seen from this vantage point, and the pressing question of violence and suffering in COMEDY.
Read MoreArnaut Daniel: one of the most renowned troubadour poets of the Middle Ages, a lusty writer of extreme difficulty, an erotic master, and the final penitent we meet on Mount Purgatory. He’s in the flames that refine the lustful. And he speaks in his own Provençal, using a triplicate rhyme that sums up the work of penance on Mount Purgatory.
Read MoreHaving found his poetic father, Guido Guinizzelli, and having declared that Guinizzelli’s poetry will last as long as modern custom allows, our pilgrim, Dante, now hears Guinizzelli morph the “sweetness” of this new style into “truth” before offering a beautiful example of that style . . . which the poet Dante then uses to finish their conversation.
Read MoreDante is aghast when Guido Guinizzelli identifies himself. This poet from one generation before is Dante’s poetic father. The pilgrim is at first so amazed that he gets lost in a crabbed classical simile. But he and Guinizzelli eventually straight things out and come down to the sweet, new, clear style for which Dante wants to be known.
Read MoreGuido Guinizzelli steps out to identify himself as our spokesperson for the penitent lustful. He answers the pilgrim Dante’s questions about who is on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory with a dense net of classical allusions and the creation of new words, the best work a poet can do in Dante’s theory of poetry.
Read MoreWe may have known who the penitents in the fires of the seventh terrace of Purgatory are, but our pilgrim certainly doesn’t know! He can only get out of his confusion by pulling out a manuscript, ruling the paper, and getting ready to write his way into the revelation.
Read MoreThe pilgrim can’t answer the question for why he’s in Purgatory while in his corporeal body because he’s interrupted by a new group of penitents. Moving in the opposite direction to anyone on the mountain, these are the homosexuals, placed right at the end of the climb to heaven. Love has truly moved the fence in Dante’s understanding of the world.
Read MoreAs Dante the pilgrim walks along the narrow path between the flames of lust and the drop into the abyss on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory, his shadow makes the flames more colorful, about the way a poet in the troubadour tradition always makes the flames of lust glow hotter.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante arrives on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory, a landscape full of flames. He, Virgil, and Statius must thread their way on a narrow path between the burning flames and the drop into the abyss off the side of the mountain . . . about as Dante the poet has to negotiate his relationship with Beatrice, the object of his own (lustful?) desire.
Read MoreStatius concludes his discourse on embryology by finally answering the pilgrim Dante’s question about how souls can take on material attributes in the afterlife . . . and by gently refining both Virgil’s unsatisfactory answers earlier in this canto and by gently correcting Virgil’s discussions of the souls in the afterlife in THE AENEID.
Read MoreStatius continues his discussion of human embryology, following the fetus through its various developmental stages until it finally forms a brain, the seat of rationality. At that point, the prime mover turns toward it and breathes a new spirit into it . . . to make it self-reflexive.
Read MoreDante asks his question about how immaterial shades can take on material properties. Virgil tries to give two answers, neither satisfactory. So he turns the lecture over to the redeemed Statius, who launches into a discussion of human digestion. Food is purified into blood, which then coagulates into a fetus.
Read MoreVirgil attempts to answer the pilgrim Dante’s question about how immaterial shades can take on material attributes (like growing thin on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory). Virgil tries two answers but ultimately has to give up and turn the discussion over to Statius as they ascend to the seventh terrace.
Read MoreAs the pilgrim Dante, Virgil, and Statius begin to make their very fast ascent to the final terrace of Mount Purgatory, the pilgrim has a burning question about, yes, the cadaverous gluttons on the previous terrace but really about what’s been happening since almost the opening of COMEDY: How do unbodied shades experience physical sensations?
Read MoreA read-through of PURGATORIO, Cantos XXV - XXVII, the final terrace of Mount Purgatory where the lustful do their penance in the flames. We find out more about Dante’s poetics, we hear a part of COMEDY actually in medieval Provencal, and we discover the great change in our pilgrim’s character after he walks out of the fire.
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