Episode 84. Proud Oderisi Confronts The Vagaries Of Artistic Fame: PURGATORIO, Canto XI, Lines 73 - 108

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On Purgatory's terrace of pride, we turn from noble Omberto to an artist, a manuscript illuminator, Oderisi da Gubbio, who delivers some of the most memorable lines in all of PURGATORIO.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through the first half of Oderisi's speech, all about the vagaries of artistic fame, the passing of Cimabue in favor of Giotto, and the coming of a poet who can kick two well-known Guido's out of the Italian nest.

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

[01:49] My English translation of this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XI, lines 73 - 108. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation about this passage, please scroll down this page.

[05:18] Dante the pilgrim and the illuminator Oderisi appear to know each other--which may well be a first comment on the vagaries of artistic fame.

[06:48] Who were Oderisi da Gubbio and the Bolognese Franco?

[11:55] Laughter may be near the root of Dante's art.

[14:25] And desire may lie near the root of Dante's understanding of human behavior.

[18:29] Oderisi mixes his metaphors--he is no poet!

[20:21] Giotto surpasses Cimabue in the development of craft and its tie to fame.

[23:35] And someone (Dante?) may well pass the two Guidos in literature . . . although he may be more humbled than first appears to be the case.

[27:28] The prideful in PURGATORIO's first terrace reference the heretics in INFERNO.

[29:44] The end of the passage makes Brunetto Latini's grand, heroic speech into a lie.

[34:52] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XI, lines 73 - 108.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XI, Lines 73 – 108

As I listened, I bowed down my face.

Then one of them, and not this guy who spoke,

Contorted himself beneath the weight that held him down.

He saw me and recognized me and called out to me,

Even though he had a tough time keeping his eyes

On me as I went along with them all hunched over.

“Oh,” I said to him, “aren’t you Oderisi,

The honor of Gubbio and the honor of that art

Which is called ‘illumination’ in Paris?”

“Brother,” he said, “pages like those laugh even more

Because of the brush strokes of the Bolognese Franco.

The honor’s all his . . . and only mine in part.

“Truth be told, I’d hardly have been this accommodating

While I was alive because the great desire

To excel held my heart in a tight grip.

“We pay our debt here because of just this sort of pride.

I wouldn’t even yet be at this point, except that while it could be done

And I still had the ability to sin, I turned toward God.

“Oh, the empty glory of human capabilities!

For such a short time the green lasts on the summit

Even if a foul age comes at its heels.

“In painting, Cimabue believed

He held the field. And now it’s Giotto that gets the cheers—

So much so that the other’s fame has dimmed.

“In like manner, one Guido has taken the glory

Of our mother tongue from another—and maybe someone has been born

Who will drive first the one and then the other from the nest.

“The world’s renown is no more than a blustery wind,

Blowing from one spot, then another,

Changing its name with every direction.

“Will greater honor be yours if you strip off your flesh

When you’re old rather than if you’d died

While you still had Pappo and Dindi on your lips

“After a thousand years have gone by? That’s a shorter span of time

Than the blink of an eye when compared to eternity, and not much

When compared to the rotation of even the slowest celestial sphere.”