Virgil 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 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 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 MoreDante and Virgil now walk along the fifth terrace of Mount Purgatory, seeing penitent souls who are face down, stuck to the earth, unable to turn over. Virgil wants to get on up to the next terrace but Dante the pilgrim wants to stop and talk to one of these penitents.
Read MoreThe 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 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 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.
Read MoreDante comes out of his ecstatic visions to get razzed by Virgil, who wonders if the pilgrim is drunk or really sleepy. It’s a rare moment of humor in PURGATORIO and perhaps yet another answer to the problem of wrath: laughter. And it may even explain Dante’s taunt about all these “not false errors” he has.
Read MoreThe long awaited angel finally arrives and ushers Dante and Virgil to the stairway up to the third terrace of Purgatory. As the two climb this easier ascent, Dante takes a moment to get Virgil to gloss two lines spoken by Guido del Duca in Canto XIV. Both in Dante’s question and in Virgil’s answer, we can sense the changing notion of COMEDY as we enter the middle cantos of the poem.
Read MoreAs Dante the pilgrim and Virgil begin to walk away from the envious penitents on the second terrace of Purgatory proper, Virgil, silent for a long while, suddenly pipes up to refocus and reinterpret our entire experience in cantos XII and XIV, transforming the linearity espoused by Sapia and Guido del Duca into the comedic circularity of Dante’s poem.
Read MoreDante tiptoes by the envious on Purgatory’s second terrace, thinking he’s making some gaffe by staying silent. But Virgil is having none of it. He tells Dante to be brief . . . and Dante launches into overblown flattery (reminiscent of a certain moment for Virgil in INFERNO XIII). How much irony is found in the texture of this seemingly simple passage from PURGATORIO.
Read MoreDante and Virgil arrive at the second terrace of Purgatory proper in a passage that seems at first glance to be fairly straightforward, naturalistic detail . . . until we notice the neologism (new word) Dante has coined, until we notice the line that barely makes sense because it has so many possible meanings, and until we realize that Virgil is offering a pagan prayer in the land of the redeemed penitents.
Read MoreDante dreams his way to the gate of Purgatory using three classical images about “unnatural” or “unrefined” love, while burning up with sexual ecstasy in the talons of the great eagle from Zeus and becomes Ganymede, the cupbearer to the gods. A wild (and troubling) ride for a Christian poet, to say the least.
Read MoreSordello tells Virgil they have to find a place to settle in for the night because sunset will mean they can’t move up anymore. The allegory is intense: the will, light, darkness, stasis, and descent. Maybe you should will yourself to stand still when you don’t have any light, rather than moving backwards and away from your goal.
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