The pilgrim may be on his way to the fifth terrace of Purgatory, but he’s still burdened by his dream of the seductive woman and the holy, speedy lady. Virgil comes to the rescue once again—this time with a reinterpretation of that dream (which leaves us a lot of questions!) and a command to look up at the heavens as the ultimate lure of desire.
Read MoreAwakened by the foul smell in his second Purgatorial dream, Dante the pilgrim finds himself out of tune with his surroundings: a bright new day, the sun at his back, and an angel who fans him on to the fifth terrace ahead. Most curious of all, those who mourn are promised “ladies of consolation,” which the pilgrim doesn’t seem to fully recognize.
Read MoreDante’s dream continues with the ugly woman turned beautiful . . . and then into a siren. She sings a song about Ulysses (a song that gets his story wrong but brings him back into COMEDY) before a holy speedy lady descends to request Virgil’s aid in (once again) saving Dante the pilgrim.
Read MoreOur pilgrim Dante falls asleep on the fourth terrace of Mount Purgatory, just as he’s been passed by the racing slothful. The night air is chilly and his dream is chillier: a deformed woman made beautiful by our pilgrim’s act of observing her.
Read MoreAs the zealous slothful run on, two more come in the rear, biting the penitents with warnings about sloth. After they’re gone, the pilgrim can finally get some rest. He has a new thought—curiously undefined—which leads him into his second dream in PURGATORIO.
Read MoreAt last, the slothful penitents arrive . . . in a frenzied rush. The horde passes by the pilgrim and Virgil as one soul calls out his story. It speaks a brave truth about the family of a very powerful warlord . . . in fact, the very warlord who has hosted and guarded Dante on the run for years.
Read MoreVirgil has finished his reasoned discourses on love. The pilgrim and he still stand at the cusp of the fourth terrace of Purgatory. Night is coming on and the pilgrim is losing the will to climb on. But don’t go to sleep just yet. You may get run over by the Bacchic frenzy of the slothful.
Read MoreVirgil offers a third discourse on love to show his work and to get close to an understanding of ethics. In doing so, he reaches into Aristotle’s logic of causality and attempts to come to terms with why humans behave they do. But even as he reaches back, he looks forward to our modern understanding of ethics.
Read MoreVirgil has finished his second discourse on love, showing the syllogistic work behind his first discourse. But Virgil must not be too good at rhetoric, because the pilgrim Dante has yet more questions, including one that is fundamental to any religious thinking.
Read MoreAfter the pilgrim’s request that Virgil show his work, the old poet condenses and recasts the basis of thinking in Western culture from its roots in Aristotle. But Virgil’s claims run into specific problems, which Dante the poet tries to solve in the way he knows best: with metaphor.
Read MoreVirgil seems to have reached a conclusion to his discourse on love in PURGATORIO, Canto XVII. But not for the pilgrim. And maybe not for Dante the poet. As Canto XVIII opens, we find the pilgrim asking Virgil to show his work to explain his seemingly air-tight syllogisms about human ethics.
Read MoreVirgil concludes his central discourse on love—the center of both PURGATORIO and indeed COMEDY as a whole—on a strangely ambiguous note. After so much certainty about how humans act and why the afterlife is set up as it is, he ends by saying, “I just don’t know”—a wildly discordant note amid so much “truth.”
Read MoreVirgil continues his discourse on love, the central discourse in Dante’s COMEDY. Virgil explains love as the basis of human behavior, using reasoning from both Aquinas and Aristotle. His understanding of ethics forms the basis of Purgatory itself and perfectly fits Dante’s ultimate vision that desire drives us to God.
Read MoreDante runs out of steam just as he crests the stair at the cusp of the fourth terrace of Purgatory proper. The sun is setting, the moon is rising, and we know he can’t climb anymore. But he still wants to know where he is and what’s going on. So he turns to the damned Virgil, ever the shocking guide to this part of the afterlife.
Read MoreDante and Virgil have reached the fourth terrace of Purgatory proper, the spot where the slothful race around to purge their sin. But before we see the runners, Virgil treats the pilgrim (and us) to the central discourse of COMEDY: all human actions are rooted in love. Here’s a read-through of PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, Line 73, to Canto XVIII, Line 145.
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