Cato is the gatekeeper of Purgatory. Does that mean he’s redeemed? And if he is, what does that do to the poem. What’s more, Marcia, Cato’s wife, is praying for him in Limbo. Can she? Or does Virgil not know what prayer is? Questions abound as we explore this mind-boggling passage a second time from Canto I of PURGATORIO, the second third of Dante’s COMEDY.
Read MoreVirgil answers the lone old man with the first long speech of PURGATORIO. But that speech opens up so many questions. How does Virgil know who this old man is? How does Virgil know there are seven realms of Purgatory? Why does Virgil make Dante the pilgrim show such abject obeisance, more so than he will show to many of the saints in Paradise? Is Virgil still a reliable guide?
Read MoreIn the opening canto of PURGATORIO, Dante the pilgrim turns from the wonder of the stars to something even more astounding: a lone, old man standing next to him. The pilgrim doesn’t seem shocked. But we certainly will be. This lone old man will disrupt COMEDY, unsettle its readers, and change the laws of the afterlife. Quite a lot a solitary figure under a gorgeous predawn sky.
Read MoreIn the opening lines of PURGATORIO, we turn from the Dante the poet to Dante the pilgrim—and specifically to his wonder at the predawn sky and the regeneration it begins in him. But we also encounter some tough interpretive questions right up front: Who are the “first people” and what are these four stars the pilgrim sees? All in all, this passage moves from laughter to loss, the poles of the human experience.
Read MoreDante opens PURGATORIO with himself, with the poet, rather than with the pilgrim, his fictional alter ego (who gets the opening bits of INFERNO). Dante expresses his Christian hopes as well as his potentially heterodox theology on the human will. And he offers us a glimpse of both his hubris and his doubts with his third invocation to the muses in COMEDY.
Read MoreWe’ve begun our exploration of Dante’s mountain of Purgatory. A mountain in more than one way! As we stand on the shores, we’ll read the first two cantos in my English translation, then I’ll raise six initial, interpretive questions that we can answer over the course of breaking these cantos into smaller sections.
Read MoreAn introduction to PURGATORIO—not so much to the second portion of Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY; more, an introduction to how we’re going to climb this beast of a mountain. Also, the five ways I initially read (that is, interpret) PURGATORIO—although I’ll bet they’ll change during our climb.
Read More
