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

Dante the poet adds a coda to his (fake) ekphrastic poetry on the reliefs in the road bed of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory. He steps back and explains the very nature of the art to us: realer than real, as it were. Then he moves the passage out from its narrative base and into a moral lesson based on an allegorical (and anagogical) reading of his masterwork, COMEDY.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through the last passage on the theory of art for this terrace of PURGATORIO.

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

[01:29] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XII, lines 64 - 72. If you’d like to read along, please scroll down this page.

[02:40] Dante seems to double down on the artistic claims of the terrace of pride.

[05:52] Dante reminds us that we're reading an allegorical (and anagogical) poem.

[10:16] Humans create their moral truths by telling lies.

[16:21] Rereading the passage: Purgatorio, Canto XII, lines 64 - 72.

And here’s my English translation of Purgatorio, Canto XII, Lines 64 – 72

What master of the brush and stylus

Could have fabricated the chiaroscuro and tracings

That would astonish even a discriminating genius?

The dead seemed dead; the living, living.

Somebody who saw the actual events saw them no better

Than I did with my head bent down, treading on top of them.

Now grow arrogant and walk with your faces up,

You sons of Eve. Don’t lower your vision

To pay attention to your own evil path!