Virgil 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.
Read MoreAfter Sordello and Virgil embrace, Dante the poet appears to want to return Virgil to the center of the narrative stage in his walk across the known universe. But can he? How does he renegotiate the damned Virgil’s presence in the sections of COMEDY devoted to the redeemed? And what of Cato, always lurking the theology’s narrative background?
Read MoreAfter the lazy souls with Belacqua in the shade, Dante and Virgil come across a group that seems in a frenzied: running, shouting, galloping, calling out, speaking in one voice. They’re a marked contrast to the new motivation Dante the pilgrim gives for his journey: peace.
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