PURGATORIO, Episode 46. Winners, Losers, And Beggars: PURGATORIO, Canto VI, Lines 1 - 24

Six souls who’ve died violent deaths accost Dante the pilgrim on the lower slopes of Mount Purgatory. They all want him to take back news of them, so the living will pray for their ascent. It’s a complicated game of cat and mouse when it comes to their identities. But there’s another game being played, one much closer to Dante’s heart. And it has a real loser: Virgil!

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PURGATORIO, Episode 45. The Strange Brew Of Love And Disgust: Purgatorio, Cantos VI - VIII

Reading Purgatorio, Cantos VI - VIII in my English translation. These are three tough cantos before we arrives at the gate of Purgatory proper. Before we break them down into smaller chunks to study them, let’s read them straight through to discover the issues Virgil, Dante, and the reader face as the journey becomes increasingly difficult.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 44. "Che Son La Pia": PURGATORIO, Canto V, Lines 130 - 136

The third speech in PURGATORIO, Canto V, has given rise to more criticism per line that almost any other moment in COMEDY. Pia comes forward to give her short, enigmatic, elliptical tale, her violent death which must be inferred from her speech. What can we make of its poetics? What is Dante the poet trying to do with this tragic woman who speaks just a few lines after the first moment of the true veneration of Mary in COMEDY?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 43. The Struggle For A Son's Soul: PURGATORIO, Canto V, Lines 85 - 129

The second soul who died violently steps forward to speak in PURGATORIO, Canto V. This time, it’s Buonconte da Montefeltro, one of Dante’s enemies from the battle of Campeldino. He tells a tale that reverses his father’s tale from INFERNO. And Dante the poet is perhaps correcting “errors” from INFERNO throughout the early cantos of PURGATORIO.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 42. The Strangely Beautiful And Poetic Death Of Jacopo Del Cassero: PURGATORIO, Canto V, Lines 64 - 84

The rush of unison souls on the first minor ledge of PURGATORIO becomes quiet as one soul steps forward to tell the tale of his death to Dante the poet and Virgil, his guide. This soul’s story begins with a small reprimand and continue through the facts of his death to a beautiful, poetic line. Along the way, we may have a glimpse of what Dante the poet is up to in Ante-Purgatory and the changing poetics of PURGATORIO.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 41. In A Rush For Peace: PURGATORIO, Canto V, Lines 37 - 63

After 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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PURGATORIO, Episode 40. The Prisoners Of Hope: PURGATORIO, Canto V, Lines 22 - 36

Dante and Virgil pass beyond Belacqua’s lazy cohorts and find themselves among some very industrious souls who are also eager to know how the pilgrim Dante is still in his body. This time, Virgil’s reply is completely different. What’s going on? What accounts for the change in Virgil?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 39. Distractions And The Demands Of Writing PURGATORIO: PURGATORIO, Canto V, Lines 1 - 21

Dante the pilgrim seems flattered when some of the negligent souls notice that he’s still in his own body. Virgil offers a stern reprimand, one of the most strident in COMEDY. But Virgil may be onto something greater: how to write PURGATORIO. It can’t just be idiosyncratic to the pilgrim’s reactions. Otherwise, the poem won’t accomplish what Dante the poet wants.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 38. Mobs On The Mountain: A Read-Through Of PURGATORIO, Canto V

We’ve come to the end of the first narrative arc of Dante’s PURGATORIO: Canto V. The narrative seems to get more and more frenetic until suddenly it does this amazing decrescendo to a very quiet voice, a woman’s voice, seemingly stripped bare of almost all of its details. It’s a haunting conclusion to the first major section of the second canticle of Dante’s COMEDY.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 37. Belacqua Redux: PURGATORIO, Canto IV, Lines 97 - 139

Certainly since Samuel Beckett, indeed even before him, Belacqua has been interpreted as a parodic, comedic, or ironic figure, sprawled out on the first minor ledge of Mount Purgatory. But what if Dante the poet intends him otherwise? What if his speeches are indeed a warning about negligence? Must we interpret Belacqua through the lens of “Waiting For Godot”?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 36. Belacqua, The King Of Misdirection Through Centuries Of Reading Dante's COMEDY: PURGATORIO, Canto IV, Lines 115 - 136

Belacqua has invoked perhaps more interpretive issues for readers of PURGATORIO than any other character in the second canticle of Dante’s COMEDY. Let’s talk about the various ways he can be interpreted and see how both Beatrice and Ulysses sit uneasily behind his words as he confronts the pilgrim Dante and his guide, Virgil, on their climb up the mountain.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 35. When The Going Gets Tough, Some People Just Sit Down: PURGATORIO, Canto IV, Lines 97 -114

After much high-level scholastic reasoning on the soul’s unity and much discussion of medieval astronomy and geography, Dante the pilgrim and Virgil encounter a soul who simply doesn’t want to move out of the shade in the noontime heat. He’s a warning, perhaps. To Dante? To us readers? What’s ahead is hard! Be ready.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 34. Astronomy = Geography = Morality: Purgatorio, Canto IV, Lines 76 - 96

Stopped on the first ledge of Mount Purgatory because the pilgrim Dante is so out of breath, he and Virgil, his guide, discuss the astronomical position of the sun, then the geography of the mountain, and finally the morality of the climb. How does astronomy get to morality? By Dante’s poetics, the grand art of misdirection as the ultimate directionality.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 31. The First "Scientific" Disquisition Is A Grand Misdirection: Purgatorio, Canto IV, Lines 1 - 18

Manfred has finished his grand monologue and reached a series of conclusions, including those about the ultimate fate of even the excommunicated and the ways the living can aid the souls of the dead in the “good” part of the afterlife. These are shocking bits in a shocking passage—except Dante’s not done. The poet is about to show us that the ultimate conclusions from the passage aren’t those we suspected.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 30. The Sad (And Fictional) Story Of Manfred's Corpse: PURGATORIO, Canto III, Lines 121 - 145

Manfred continues his tale—this time, about what happened to his body after his death at the hands of the French forces at Benevento in 1266. He also asks Dante the pilgrim to go back to his daughter, Constance, to pray to elevate his lowly position in Purgatory. Why does Dante the poet make up the story of Manfred’s lost body? Why do the prayers of the living aid the dead? And why is PURGATORIO, Canto III, so tightly structured?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 29. The First Great Penitent Of Purgatory, Manfred: PURGATORIO, Canto III, Lines 103 - 120

Dante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, take up with a flock of sheeplike souls at the bottom of Mount Purgatory. Dante and Virgil are in fact in the lead when one of these humbled souls steps out to identify himself as Manfred, self-proclaimed King of Sicily and the illegitimate son of Emperor Frederick II. What follows is the second (after Cato) of the many surprises of the poet Dante’s PURGATORIO.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 28. Of Flocks, Pilgims, And Living in the "What Is": PURGATORIO, Canto III, Lines 79 - 102

Dante and Virgil come across a shepherd-less flock of souls on the bottom rung of Mount Purgatory. They’re hesitant, many of them moving without knowing why. They’re living in the “quia,” the “what is,” the very thing Virgil encouraged humans to be content with, the very thing that brought him so much despair earlier in PURGATORIO, Canto III.

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