PURGATORIO, Episode 105. Sapía, Part Three: Rhetorical Games Reveal Both The Penitent And The Pilgrim: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 133 - 154

Dante the pilgrim (and even Dante the poet!) may have met his match with Sapia on Purgatory’s second terrace, the ledge of the envious. She manipulates him into a confessional moment, then either turns that confession into flattery or comedy, all to get what she wants: a refurbished reputation back among the living. She’s caught in the human dilemma: neither good nor bad but a wild mix in-between.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 104. Sapía, Part Two--Blasphemy Among The Penitents Of Envy: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 112 - 132

Dante the pilgrim gets more than he asked for: Sapia’s incredible monologue, a master stroke of rhetoric, part honesty, part manipulation, all wrapped around one of the most blasphemous lines in all of COMEDY. The terrace of envy is full of surprises . . . none bigger than this woman who matches wits with Dante.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 103. Sapía, Part One--The Pilgrim Gets More (And Less!) Than He Bargained For: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 94 - 111

Dante the pilgrim, goaded by Virgil, has worked up the courage (or the flattery) to prompt one of the souls to speak on Purgatory’s second terrace, the landscape of the envious. She does . . . and gives Dante both more and exactly what (or in fact, perhaps a bit less) than he asked for. Her reticence, her generosity: the combined tension inside the human problem of envy.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 102. Flattery Will Get You Irony: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 73 - 93

Dante 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.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 101. Eyes Stitched Shut: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 46 - 72

Dante the pilgrim finally sees the penitents on the second terrace of PURGATORIO. They’re huddled against each other, leaning back against the mountain’s cliff, and clothed in livid haircloth. But they also have their eyelids stitched shut with wire, blinded because of this sin that we have reinterpreted and tamed as jealousy but that entails so much more.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 100. The Voices Of Love And Alienation: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 22 - 45

Dante and Virgil make great haste along the empty second terrace of PURGATORIO but are soon accosted by three disembodied voices, whipping them on to love but also offering a node of the alienation that will pervade this terrace . . . and that is crucial as a separating space between Dante the poet and his master, Virgil.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 99. The Easy Climb Into Complex Meaning: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 1 - 21

Dante 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.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 98. Dante, Aquinas, Aristotle, And The Fences Of Truth

In PURGATORIO, Dante begins to incorporate more and more experimental and experiential truth into his poem, taking his cues from Aquinas and Aristotle. But if God is the author of all truth, how does any truth come from experiential sources, much less a pagan philosopher, particularly one whose writings have been reinvigorated by both Islamic and Jewish scholars?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 97. The Second Terrace Of Purgatory: A Read-Through Of PURGATORIO, Cantos XIII, Line 1, though XV, Line 84

A read-through of the second terrace of Purgatory proper, the terrace of envy, in the second canticle of Dante’s masterwork COMEDY. We’ll cover the ground from PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Line 1, though Canto XV, Line 84, walking among the ranks of the envious and asking some initial questions before we dig into it passage by passage in our slow walk across Dante’s known universe.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 96. Erasing God's Writing And Virgil's Smile: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 118 - 139

Dante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, take on the last bit of the climb out of the first terrace of Purgatory proper, the terrace of pride. PURGATORIO continues to compellingly difficult and enjoyable because they exit the terrace with two interesting and unexpected moments: Virgil smiles and God’s writing is erased.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 95. Narrow Stairs, Contorted Similes, And The On-Going Poetry Of Hell: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 100 - 117

Dante and Virgil climb to the second terrace of Purgatory through one of the more difficult similes in all of COMEDY: a contorted and rage-filled bit of poetry about Florence and its corruption, all in the emotional landscape of redemption, which ends at one of Jesus’s beatitudes and also the screams of hell itself.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 94. The Climb Out Of Pride: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 73 - 99

Dante and Virgil begin to leave the terrace of pride and all its art, but not before Virgil returns to form, becoming the guide to the afterlife with a penchant for quoting himself and not before an angel must guide them to the stairs, an angel who carries in his face an implicit reference to Lucifer (that is, Satan).

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PURGATORIO, Episode 93. Storytelling, Moral Allegory, And The Human Paradox: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 64 - 72

Dante the poet steps out from behind Dante the pilgrim to double down on his claims for art (that it’s realer than real), to push further his own (fake) ekphrastic poetry, and to remind us that the moral allegory that is COMEDY is at its heart a story, the only lie humans have to tell the moral truths of our existence.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 92. More Questions Than Answers For The Reliefs In The Road Bed Of Pride: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 22 - 63

An overview of the reliefs carved into the road bed of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory. They (and the poet Dante) leave us with more questions than answers . . . which is curious in a passage that is supposed to be a rather simple, monochromatic lesson about morality (or the dangers of pride).

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PURGATORIO, Episode 91. Walking On Pride, Part Three: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 49 - 60

Dante the pilgrim walks over the final figures carved into the paving stones of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory: Alcmeon (and his mother, Eriphyle), Sennacherib, Tomyris (and Cyrus), and Holofernes (and Judith). This passage is full of presented and occluded figures and ends with a very odd comment about Holofernes’ “relics from his martyrdom.”

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PURGATORIO, Episode 90. Walking On Pride, Part Two: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 37 - 48

Dante the pilgrim continues to look at the carved reliefs in the road bed of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory. He sees four more exemplars: Niobe, Saul, Arachne, and Reheboam. Two from the classical world and two from the Bible world. But one a statue and one an allegory of art. What is the relationship of pride and artistic creation?

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PURGATORIO, Episode 89. Walking On Pride, Part One: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 25 - 36

Virgil has directed Dante the pilgrim to look at the road bed of the terrace of pride. In it are carvings, much like tombs in the floor of a church. They’re reliefs of pride . . . or its exemplars. Or some of its exemplars. And then there’s Apollo, the pagan god of poetry and a bit of a muddle for Dante’s theology.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 88. Art, Realism, And Dante's Sheer Audacity: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, lines 13 - 24

Virgil directs Dante the pilgrim to look down at the art that will lie under his feet, carved into the first terrace of Mount Purgatory. But then the poet steps forward with an audacious claim: this art is “realer” than its historical basis, than its original moment, because it’s God’s art. But it’s not. It’s Dante’s.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 87. Dante's Pride Both Lanced And Swelling: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, Lines 1 - 12

Dante is hunched over with the prideful, going along as if he has a rock on his back. He certainly wants us to think the grand swelling of pride has been lanced on this terrace of Purgatory . . . until Virgil tells him to be more like the damned Ulysses, and our pilgrim straightens up, and sets off at a much quicker pace. A most curious passage about Dante’s relationship with pride.

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PURGATORIO, Episode 86. A Bad Boy Makes Good On The Terrace Of Pride: PURGATORIO, Canto XI, Lines 109 - 139

The illuminator Oderisi continues his monologue on the first terrace of Purgatory proper. He points out a third penitent: the warlord and tyrant from Siena, Provenzan Salvani, who plotted Florence’s demise and perhaps foreshadows Dante’s exile. How are the pains of Purgatory not “contrapasso” as in INFERNO? What part does art play in history? And how does Dante imagine his own art changing its reader?

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