Dante the pilgrim and Virgil walk on from the pressing crowd of those who died violent deaths. And now it’s the pilgrim’s turn to press Virgil. He quizzes the old poet on the theology of a passage in THE AENEID. And the answer Virgil gives is one for the ages: utter gibberish.
Read MoreSix 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!
Read MoreReading 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.
Read MoreThe 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?
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
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.
Read MoreDante 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?
Read MoreDante 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.
Read MoreWe’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.
Read MoreCertainly 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”?
Read MoreBelacqua 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.
Read MoreAfter 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.
Read MoreStopped 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.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and Virgil come to a breather on the first ledge around Mount Purgatory. But it’s hardly a rest. Dante, in shock, notices the sun’s rays on his “wrong” side. Virgil then explains the workings of this geocentric system, an explanation guaranteed to leave a modern reader baffled.
Read MoreDante and Virgil begin their climb up Mount Purgatory. It proves exhausting! The pilgrim Dante has to climb on his hands and knees. He’s gasping for breath. Why then do we always assume that the good is hard and the bad is easy? And if this climb is so rough, what’s in it for Virgil?
Read MoreManfred 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.
Read MoreManfred 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?
Read MoreDante 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.
Read MoreDante 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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