Episode 80. When Art Envisions What Is: PURGATORIO, Canto X, Lines 112 - 139

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Virgil has prompted the pilgrim Dante to look at the penitents coming around the bend on the first terrace of Purgatory proper. But Dante can't make them out . . . until the poet intervenes with an invective and the envisions these penitents as works of art.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the hall of mirrors that Dante's theory of art is becoming even on the first terrace of PURGATORIO.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:31] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto X, lines 112 - 139. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment to continue the conversation, please scroll down this page.

[04:00] The prophetic denunciation in the center of the passage hopes for a collective redemption out of individual sin.

[10:08] Dante's and Virgil's eyesights are first compromised so that they can't comprehend what they see.

[12:30] Art's power to interpret the realities of what is seen leads to Dante's hall of mirrors in which art is interpreting the real while being based on the real.

[18:01] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto X, lines 112 - 139.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto X, Lines 112 – 139

I began, “Master, the ones I see

Coming toward us don’t resemble people in the least.

I don’t know what they are; what I see is so confounding.”

And he [replied] to me: “The ponderous quality

Of their woe pushes them down to the earth

So that at first even my eyes seemed out of whack.

“But hold your gaze right there. Use your eyes to untangle

What’s sitting underneath those stones.

At this point, you can already see how each one pounds his chest.”

Oh, proud Christians! Oh, weary wretches!

[You’re] sick with those visions that fill up your brains.

You’ve put your confidence in backward-leading steps.

Don’t you get it? We’re born as worms

But we can morph into the angelic butterfly

That soars up to justice without any obstacle.

What makes your spirits rear up so high and mighty?

You’re about like defective things,

Like a squishy worm that can’t even hold its shape.

To hold up a roof or a ceiling, just where the base juts out,

We sometimes see a figure crouching down

With its knees pressed against its chest.

That untrue depiction may truly cause

Distress in someone who sees it. Such were

These I saw when at last I could tell what was what.

In truth, they were more or less crushed

By whatever the size of the burdens on their backs.

Even the guy who showed the most patience

Seemed to say through his tears, “I just can’t anymore.”